Knoxville Construction Accident Lawyer

Fox, Farley, Willis & Burnette represents injured workers, pedestrians, and families across Knoxville and Knox County when a job site turns dangerous, and the firm’s trial lawyers handle serious injury and wrongful death claims throughout East Tennessee and the rest of the state. A Knoxville construction accident lawyer spends most of the early days on one question that decides everything that follows: who, besides the employer, can be held responsible?

That question matters because of how Tennessee treats workplace injuries. An employee hurt on the job is generally limited to workers’ compensation against the company that employs them. But a construction site is rarely one company. General contractors, subcontractors, equipment makers, property owners, engineering firms, and delivery drivers all converge on the same few acres. When one of them causes the harm, a separate injury claim can open up, and that claim can include pain and suffering and the full measure of lost earning capacity.

Knoxville has plenty of ground for these cases. Steady commercial building, apartment development, road and utility work, and hillside residential projects all put crews on scaffolds, roofs, trenches, and heavy equipment every day. The decisions made in the first weeks after a fall, a collapse, or a struck-by incident often determine whether a strong claim survives.

Where Construction Injury Claims Come From in Knox County

Construction injuries follow patterns, and each pattern points toward different evidence and different defendants. A fall from a roof or ladder raises questions about harnesses, anchor points, guardrails, and who was responsible for supplying and inspecting them. A trench cave-in raises questions about shoring and who controlled the excavation. A crane or lift accident raises questions about maintenance, operator training, and load charts.

The firm has seen what equipment failure can cost. A Knox County roofer suffered a traumatic brain injury when his safety harness failed, and the firm recovered $1.5 million for him. That kind of case turns on the equipment itself: who bought it, who inspected it, who maintained it, and whether a manufacturer built it defectively.

Not every victim is a worker. Pedestrians walking past a site, motorists struck by a construction company truck, and neighbors hurt by falling debris have no workers’ compensation limits at all. They can bring an ordinary negligence claim against everyone involved. The firm recovered $3.4 million for the family of a man killed in a Morgan County rear-end collision caused by a construction company driver, a reminder that the vehicles serving a job site can be as dangerous as the work inside it.

Types of Construction Accident Cases We Handle

• Falls From Heights: Roofs, scaffolding, ladders, open floors, and unprotected edges produce the most devastating injuries, including spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injury, and death. Liability often reaches past the employer to a general contractor, property owner, or equipment supplier.
• Defective Safety Equipment and Machinery: Harnesses, lifelines, nail guns, saws, lifts, and heavy equipment can fail because of a design or manufacturing defect, or because of poor maintenance by someone other than the employer. These are third-party claims against the maker, seller, or maintenance contractor.
• Struck-By and Caught-In Incidents: Falling tools, swinging loads, collapsing walls, and workers pinned between equipment account for crushing injuries and amputations. Site control and who directed the work become central issues.
• Trench and Excavation Collapses: Utility and foundation work can bury a worker in seconds. Evidence about soil conditions, shoring, and who supervised the dig disappears quickly once the site is backfilled.
• Construction Vehicle and Truck Crashes: Dump trucks, concrete mixers, and flatbeds moving materials to and from sites cause serious crashes on Knoxville’s roads and highways. Commercial driver records and company policies become key evidence.
• Electrocution and Burn Injuries: Contact with overhead lines, faulty temporary wiring, and ungrounded tools injures and kills workers. Responsibility can rest with a utility, an electrical subcontractor, or the party who failed to mark or de-energize hazards.
• Injuries to Bystanders and the Public: Pedestrians, passing drivers, and nearby residents hurt by falling materials, unsecured sites, or poorly managed traffic around work zones may sue every responsible company without the limits that apply to employees.
• Wrongful Death on the Job: When a worker is killed, the family may have a workers’ compensation death claim and a separate wrongful death lawsuit against outside parties whose negligence contributed.

What to Do After a Construction Accident in Knoxville

Get medical care first, and tell every provider exactly how you were hurt and that it happened at work. Records created in the first hours carry weight later. If you can, or if someone with you can, photograph the site, the equipment, the area where you fell or were struck, and any visible hazards before anyone cleans up or repairs anything.

Report the injury to your supervisor promptly and in writing. Then be careful about what comes next. Insurance adjusters, including those for your employer’s workers’ compensation carrier and for outside companies, may ask for recorded statements. You are not required to give a recorded statement to an insurer for another company, and what you say can be used to shift blame onto you.

Deadlines in Tennessee are short. Most injury lawsuits must be filed within one year of the injury, and that clock starts on the date you were hurt. In a wrongful death case, the one-year period also runs from the date of the injury, not the date of death. If criminal charges are brought against the person who caused the injury and prosecution begins within that first year, the filing period can extend to two years, but you should never count on that. If a government entity is involved, such as a public works project, a separate and strict 12-month deadline under the Governmental Tort Liability Act applies, and damages against government defendants are capped.

Preserving evidence is the other urgent task. Contractors move on, equipment gets repaired or returned, and surveillance video gets overwritten. A lawyer can send preservation demands to the general contractor, subcontractors, and equipment owners right away. Cases in Knox County are filed in the Knox County Circuit Court in the Sixth Judicial District, and cases with federal jurisdiction go to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, whose Northern Division sits in Knoxville.

One decision deserves care: whether to settle your workers’ compensation claim before the outside claim is evaluated. The employer or its insurer generally has a right to be repaid from a third-party recovery for benefits already paid, so the two claims must be coordinated from the start. Signing paperwork too early can close doors you did not know were open.

How Fault and Damage Limits Shape a Construction Case

Tennessee uses modified comparative fault. You can recover if you were less than 50 percent at fault, and your award is reduced by your percentage. At 50 percent or more, the claim is barred. Defendants know this, and they work to assign blame to the injured worker for skipping a harness or working too fast. Fault can also be assigned to people who are not in the lawsuit at all, which makes a thorough investigation of every contractor on the site more important. Tennessee has also abolished joint and several liability in most negligence cases, so each defendant generally answers only for its own share.

Economic damages, such as medical bills and lost income, are not capped in Tennessee. Noneconomic damages for pain and suffering are generally limited to $750,000, rising to $1 million for a defined catastrophic loss, which includes spinal cord injuries resulting in paraplegia or quadriplegia, certain amputations, severe burns, and the wrongful death of a parent of minor children. The jury decides whether a catastrophic loss exists, and the court applies the limit afterward without telling the jury. Those limits are lifted in narrow situations, including when the defendant intentionally caused the harm, was intoxicated, or destroyed evidence. Punitive damages, where allowed, are generally limited to the greater of two times compensatory damages or $500,000.

For someone who can never return to construction work, the uncapped economic side of the case is often where the real value sits: a lifetime of lost earning capacity and future medical care.

Why Choose Fox, Farley, Willis & Burnette for a Construction Injury Case

Fox, Farley, Willis & Burnette is a trial-focused firm serving Knoxville and Knox County, along with Anderson, Blount, Sevier, and Campbell counties and the rest of East Tennessee. Its attorneys bring more than 170 years of combined experience and have recovered over $100 million for clients, and its workplace injury practice concentrates on the third-party claims that workers’ compensation does not reach.

The courtroom record is where this matters most. Co-founder Bruce D. Fox has tried more than 125 jury trials in state and federal court, belongs to the American Board of Trial Advocates, and has been selected to Mid-South Super Lawyers 17 times. He served on the Tennessee Advisory Council on Workers’ Compensation from 2008 to 2021, which gives him a close view of how the workers’ compensation system and a third-party lawsuit fit together. The Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025 and its Paladin Award in 2011, and he is a past president of the association.

Partner Brad C. Burnette holds an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell and serves on the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association Board of Governors. Partner John Willis also sits on that Board of Governors and is a past president of the Anderson County Bar Association. Trial attorney Michael C. Beehan is fluent in Spanish, which matters on construction crews where many workers speak Spanish first; the firm also serves clients in español.

Two of the firm’s partners spent earlier years defending insurance companies, trucking companies, and businesses. They know how a contractor’s insurer builds its defense, what it looks for in a worker’s records, and where it tends to push. The firm’s results include $2.3 million for a Knox County motorcyclist who lost his leg, $1.6 million for an Anderson County man struck head-on by a commercial delivery truck on his way to work, and the $1.5 million roofer recovery noted above. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Consultations are free, and there are no attorney fees in a personal injury case unless the firm recovers compensation for you. If your injuries make travel hard, the firm can meet you at home or in the hospital.

Frequently Asked Questions About Construction Accident Claims

Can I sue my employer after a construction accident in Tennessee?

In most cases, no. Workers’ compensation is generally the only remedy against your own employer. But if someone else contributed to the injury, such as another contractor, a property owner, an equipment manufacturer, or a negligent driver, you may have a separate third-party claim.

How long do I have to file a construction injury lawsuit?

Most Tennessee injury lawsuits must be filed within one year of the date of injury. The period can stretch to two years when criminal charges are brought against the person who caused the harm and prosecution begins within the first year. Claims against government entities have their own 12-month deadline.

What is the difference between workers’ compensation and a third-party claim?

Workers’ compensation pays medical care and a portion of lost wages regardless of fault, but it does not pay for pain and suffering. A third-party claim requires proving someone else’s negligence, and it can include pain and suffering and the full value of lost earning capacity.

What if I was partly to blame for the accident?

You can still recover if you were less than 50 percent at fault. Your compensation is reduced by your share. If you are found 50 percent or more responsible, the claim is barred, which is why insurers push to assign blame to the injured worker.

Who can be held responsible on a multi-contractor job site?

Depending on the facts, responsibility may fall on a general contractor, a subcontractor, the property owner, an equipment manufacturer or rental company, an engineering or design firm, or a driver. Tennessee generally assigns each party its own share of fault rather than making one defendant pay for all of it.

Does my employer get repaid out of my third-party settlement?

Generally, yes. The employer or its workers’ compensation insurer typically has a right to be reimbursed from the recovery for benefits it already paid. How much and how it is handled depends on the case, which is why the two claims should be managed together from the beginning.

Can a family file a wrongful death claim if a worker is killed on a job site?

Yes. Under Tennessee law the right to sue passes to the surviving spouse, then to the children or next of kin, or it can be brought by the personal representative. A wrongful death suit against outside parties can proceed alongside workers’ compensation death benefits.

Is there a cap on what I can recover?

Economic damages like medical expenses and lost income are not capped. Noneconomic damages are generally limited to $750,000, or $1 million for a catastrophic loss, with exceptions for cases involving intentional harm, intoxication, or destroyed evidence.

I’m an undocumented worker or speak limited English. Can I still bring a claim?

You should speak with a lawyer about your situation rather than assume the answer. The firm serves Spanish-speaking clients in their own language, and Michael C. Beehan, a trial attorney with the firm, is fluent in Spanish.

Should I give a recorded statement to the contractor’s insurance company?

You are generally not required to give a recorded statement to an insurer for a company other than your own employer, and doing so before you understand your injuries or your rights can hurt you. Speak with a lawyer first.

What if I was hurt on a construction site I was only walking past?

Bystanders and pedestrians are not limited by workers’ compensation. You can bring a negligence claim against the contractors and owners who failed to secure the site or manage hazards, subject to Tennessee’s one-year filing deadline.

Will it cost me anything to hire your firm?

Not up front. The firm works on a contingency fee in personal injury cases, so there are no attorney fees unless compensation is recovered, and the first consultation is free.

Serving Construction Injury Clients Across Knoxville and East Tennessee

The firm represents injured workers and families throughout Knoxville and Knox County, from downtown and the Old City to Fountain City, Bearden, West Knoxville, South Knoxville, and North Knoxville. Clients also come from Farragut, Powell, Halls, Karns, Corryton, Mascot, Strawberry Plains, and Seymour. Construction crews working on projects in these communities often live across county lines, and the firm follows the work.

Neighboring Anderson County draws on the firm’s long-standing ties, including Clinton, Oak Ridge, and Oliver Springs. Blount County clients arrive from Maryville and Alcoa, Sevier County clients from Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg, and Campbell County clients from LaFollette. The firm has also represented people from Roane, Claiborne, Morgan, Jefferson, and Monroe counties, and it takes cases across Tennessee, including Johnson City, Nashville, and Memphis.

Talk to a Knoxville Construction Injury Attorney

If you or someone in your family was hurt or killed in a construction accident, a Knoxville construction injury attorney at Fox, Farley, Willis & Burnette can review what happened, identify who besides the employer may be responsible, and move quickly to preserve the evidence before it is gone. Call to schedule a free consultation. The firm will come to you at home or in the hospital if you cannot travel, and you pay no attorney fees unless there is a recovery.