Death Benefits for Road Construction Workers

Chicago Lawyers for Death Benefits for Road Construction Workers’ Families

Road construction workers face a range of risks, including death, while making our roads safer and easier and safer to drive. If your loved one was a road construction worker who died on the job, you may feel stressed and anxious about practical matters, on top of immense grief. You should call the seasoned Chicago workers’ compensation attorneys of Katz, Friedman, Eisenstein, Johnson, Bareck & Bertuca to file a claim for death benefits. We have fought for full and fair compensation for workers for more than 60 years and can bring our experience and knowledge to bear on your important claim for benefits.

Death Benefits in Chicago

Death benefits can be paid for the greater of a maximum of 25 years or for an amount up to $500,000. These benefits can include payment of your loved one’s medical bills, along with funeral and burial expenses up to $8000.

You can also obtain a monetary sum equivalent to 66 2/3 of your loved one’s gross average weekly wage in the 52 weeks before he or she died. These benefits are susceptible to a minimum and maximum limit. Although the workers’ compensation system was put in place to make it easier to obtain benefits than it is to get damages in a civil lawsuit, in practice it is a difficult system to navigate. After the loss of a loved one, you may be struggling. You should seek the help of experienced workers’ compensation lawyers to recover death benefits.

Are You Eligible for Death Benefits?

As a deceased worker’s spouse or child under age 18, you may be eligible to receive workers’ compensation death benefits. When a road construction worker has no primary beneficiaries, his or her completely dependent parents could be paid death benefits. When parents were not completely dependent, those who were at least 50% dependent on the road construction worker when he or she died, including partially dependent step-kids, parents, or siblings may be eligible to obtain benefits. As a family member bringing a claim for death benefits, you’ll need to establish your entitlement to benefits; our lawyers would need to prove you were financially dependent.

However, if you were a minor child or spouse of a deceased road construction worker, we will not need to prove your dependency. Rather we will need to establish that the road construction worker died on the job and that you are a child or spouse.

Wrongful Death Lawsuit for Damages

You can’t obtain the full spectrum of your losses after a loved one dies by bringing a workers’ compensation claim for death benefits. Under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act, our lawyers may be able to obtain economic and noneconomic damages arising out of your loved one’s death in the event that it was caused by another’s (not his employer’s) wrongful act, negligence or default.

Through a wrongful death lawsuit, we can recover the amount of income you lost along with damages for emotional pain arising out of the death. For example, if your loved one was drilling in a patch of the road and a frustrated driver ran him down, you may be able to pursue compensatory damages. Our attorneys would need to prove negligence; in some cases, a police report can go towards establishing liability.

Call a Workers’ Compensation Lawyer about Death Benefits

If you lost a loved one who was a road construction worker in a job accident, call our trustworthy Chicago workers’ compensation attorneys. We have 60 years of experience representing those who have lost loved ones, and we understand the grief and pain these losses bring. We work hard to represent family members of deceased road workers in Rockford, Aurora, Champaign, or Quincy, or anywhere in Winnebago, Kane, Sangamon, Cook, and Adams Counties. We’ve can also represent you in a third party lawsuit or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) claim. Call us at 312-724-5846 or complete our online form.