Whether you have a claim beyond workers’ compensation after a Maryland forklift accident depends on three facts: who employs you, who was driving, and who owns or made the forklift. If your own employer’s driver hit you with your employer’s forklift, workers’ compensation is usually your only claim. If any of those three is another company, you may also have a full injury claim against it.
Forklifts injure people well beyond construction sites: in distribution centers, cold storage, loading docks, lumber yards and the aisles of big-box stores. That spread is why the same kind of accident can produce very different claims. Injuries on building sites are covered on our construction accident page.
Which claim you have depends on who you are
- An employee hurt by your own employer’s forklift and driver. Workers’ compensation, which pays regardless of fault but nothing for pain and suffering.
- A truck driver or delivery worker hurt at another company’s dock or warehouse. Your own employer’s comp covers you, and you may also have a claim against the facility whose forklift and driver hurt you.
- A temp or staffing agency worker. Both the agency and the company where you were placed may be treated as your employer, which can bar a lawsuit against either. The answer depends on the arrangement, so it is worth asking rather than assuming.
- A shopper or visitor hit in a store. No workers’ comp at all. This is a premises claim against the store, and against a vendor if its employee was driving.
- An operator hurt by the machine itself. Comp against your employer, plus a possible product liability claim against the manufacturer, or a claim against a rental or maintenance company.
Large warehouses often have several companies under one roof: a logistics operator, a staffing agency, carriers and vendors. Sorting out who employed whom is the first job in almost every forklift case.
How forklift accidents happen
- Tip-overs, from turning with a raised load, speed, ramps and uneven floors. An operator who jumps clear often ends up under the overhead guard.
- Pedestrians struck in aisles and at blind corners, often while the forklift is reversing
- Falling loads from the forks, or from racking the forklift hit
- Crush injuries between the forklift and a wall, rack or trailer
- Dock accidents: a trailer that pulls away or creeps from the dock while a forklift is inside it, or a dock plate that gives way
- Workers raised on the forks or on an unsecured pallet, and falling
- Mechanical failure of brakes, steering, mast chains or hydraulics
The injuries are the severe ones: crushed feet and legs, amputation, spinal cord injury, pelvic fractures and brain injury.
Training, certification and the records that prove fault
Federal workplace safety rules, enforced in Maryland by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH), require an employer to train and evaluate every forklift operator before they drive one, to give refresher training after an accident, a near miss or unsafe operation, and to evaluate each operator’s performance at least every three years. The employer must certify that the training and evaluation were done. Federal child labor rules separately bar workers under 18 from operating forklifts in most nonfarm jobs.
The same rules require a forklift to be examined before it is used, and a truck found to be unsafe to be taken out of service. So the records worth getting quickly are:
- The operator’s training, evaluation and certification records
- Daily pre-use inspection checklists
- Maintenance and repair records, including a rental company’s
- Warehouse camera footage, usually overwritten on a short cycle
- Telematics or impact sensor data, on forklifts fitted with them
- Prior incident reports for the same aisle, dock or machine
A company that let an untrained operator drive, or kept a forklift with failing brakes in service, is usually where responsibility lies.
Who can be responsible besides your employer
- The facility operator, where its forklift and driver hurt someone who works for another company
- The manufacturer, for design and manufacturing defects, such as inadequate guarding, stability problems, or failed brakes or seat belts
- The rental or leasing company, for supplying a forklift in unsafe condition
- A maintenance contractor, for a negligent repair
- A carrier or its driver, where a trailer moved away from the dock
- A property owner, for floors, ramps and dock equipment it controls
Those claims cover pain and suffering and full lost earnings. Where you have both, the compensation insurer generally has a right to be repaid out of the third-party recovery for what it has already paid, which is why the two claims should be handled together.
How fault is argued
Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system, so ordinary carelessness does not disqualify you from comp benefits. A third-party or store claim is different. Maryland applies contributory negligence, so the defense will ask whether you walked outside a marked pedestrian lane, ignored a horn, or rode on the forks. Camera footage and the site’s own traffic rules usually settle that argument, which is one more reason to preserve them early.
What to do after a forklift accident
- Report it in writing. To your employer if you were working; if you were a visitor, ask the store for an incident report and a copy.
- Get medical care and say exactly how it happened.
- Note the forklift’s unit number, the company name on it, and who the driver works for.
- Photograph the area: the floor, the lighting, the pedestrian markings and the load.
- Ask us to send a preservation letter for the footage, the forklift and its records.
- Do not give a recorded statement to another company’s insurer before getting advice.
A work injury needs prompt written notice to your employer and a separate filing with the Workers’ Compensation Commission. A third-party or store claim generally follows the three-year injury timeline, and a death follows the wrongful death rules.
