Jason A. Harris has been representing injured people in Arizona for almost twenty years, and he’s carved out a niche that not many attorneys in the state occupy: he handles personal injury claims and workers’ compensation cases together, often in the same case. Harris founded Harris Injury Law, PLLC in Phoenix, where his work as a workers’ comp attorney regularly runs into the overlap between an employee’s benefits claim and a separate lawsuit against a negligent third party. We sat down with him to talk about where those two systems collide, what injured workers tend to get wrong, and a question about his office fields more than almost any other.
You’ve built a practice around handling both personal injury and workers’ compensation law. That’s unusual, why focus on both?
Most firms pick one lane, honestly. Workers’ comp is a no-fault, administrative system with its own deadlines and paperwork; personal injury is fault-based litigation, and the rules are completely different. But out in the real world, those two systems run into each other constantly: a delivery driver hurt in traffic, a warehouse worker injured by a subcontractor’s equipment, a construction worker hit by a car that came through a job-site barricade. If a firm only knows one side of that, the client either leaves money on the table in the comp claim, or never even finds out a separate right to sue the at-fault third party exists. Doing both means I see the whole picture from day one, instead of handing half the case off to someone else.
Walk us through what happens when a workplace injury also involves a negligent third party, say, a car accident that happens on the job.
Arizona is a no-fault state for workers’ comp, so an injured worker doesn’t have to prove the employer did anything wrong to get benefits medical treatment, plus roughly two-thirds of lost wages, up to the state’s cap, which currently sits around $5,663.04 a month. That comes from the employer’s workers’ comp insurance no matter who caused the injury. But if someone outside the employment relationship caused the crash, another driver, a subcontractor, a property owner the injured worker also has an independent right to bring a civil claim against that party, for the damages workers’ comp doesn’t cover. That includes the full amount of lost income, and pain and suffering, which comp doesn’t touch at all.
What’s the most common misunderstanding you see from injured workers about this process?
That filing for workers’ comp uses up their only shot at compensation. It doesn’t. And then on the flip side, some workers assume that going after a third party will disqualify them from comp benefits. That’s wrong too. In Arizona, both can run at the same time. The main wrinkle is that the comp carrier usually holds a lien against any third-party recovery, since they don’t want to pay twice for the same injury. But the numbers almost always make pursuing both worth it.
When those two claims run side by side, does it change what a worker can ultimately recover?
It changes it a lot. Workers’ comp caps out at statutory limits and doesn’t pay anything for pain and suffering; it’s built to be fast and predictable, not to make someone whole. The civil claim against the third party is where an injured worker can actually be made whole. I’ve had cases where the comp claim covered the immediate medical bills and part of the lost income, but the real recovery, for something like a career-altering injury, came almost entirely from the civil case against whoever was actually responsible: the driver, the subcontractor, the property owner.
Here’s one we hear constantly, and it comes up even outside the workers’ comp context: if someone’s hurt in an accident that wasn’t their fault, does their insurance go up anyway?
It’s worth clearing up, because a lot of injured people hesitate to even file a claim out of fear of what it’ll do to their premium. In Arizona, the answer is generally no. A.R.S. § 20-263 specifically bars an insurer from raising a policyholder’s premium over an accident the policyholder didn’t cause or substantially contribute to. If an insurer breaks that rule, the statute allows for a refund of the increase plus a civil penalty. That protection matters just as much when the accident happens on a work errand or a job-related drive if a worker gets hurt by another driver while doing something work-related, filing a claim, whether it’s through workers’ comp, the at-fault driver’s insurer, or the worker’s own uninsured motorist coverage, shouldn’t be the reason their personal rates go up, as long as fault sits with someone else. Rates can still move for unrelated reasons depending on where you live, how many uninsured drivers are on the road in your area but the not-at-fault accident itself isn’t supposed to be the trigger.
What would you tell someone who isn’t sure whether to file a workers’ comp claim, a third-party claim, or both?
Talk to someone before the deadlines pass. Arizona gives injured workers about a year to file a comp claim, and personal injury claims carry their own two-year statute of limitations. Miss either window and that door closes for good. Honestly, the bigger issue is that most people don’t even know a third-party claim exists until someone points it out to them and they assume workers’ comp is the whole story. Closing that gap is a lot of what a dual-focus practice is built for.
Any final thoughts for readers?
Just that these systems are more connected than most people realize, and that connection rewards moving quickly getting medical treatment documented, reporting the injury promptly, and getting a second opinion on whether a third party’s involved before evidence disappears or memories start to fade.
About Jason A. Harris
Jason A. Harris founded Harris Injury Law, PLLC, a Phoenix, Arizona firm he’s run since 2006. He’s licensed by the State Bar of Arizona and the United States District Court of Arizona, and he’s a member of the Arizona Association for Justice. Harris is known for a dual practice spanning personal injury and workers’ compensation law, having resolved thousands of car accident cases and hundreds of complex third-party liability claims stemming from workplace injuries.