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Legal Support for Machinery Crush Injuries
Industrial workers operate some of the most powerful equipment in any workplace: presses, conveyor systems, rollers, mixers, and automated machinery capable of exerting thousands of pounds of force. When a worker gets caught in or caught between that equipment, the results are catastrophic. Crush injuries are among the most severe and permanently disabling injuries a construction worker can suffer.
If you or someone you love has been hurt on an industrial job site, Pond Lehocky’s personal injury attorneys are here to fight for the full workers’ compensation benefits you are owed.
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What Are Caught In/Between Accidents?
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) classifies “caught in or between” accidents as one of the construction and industrial trades’ leading categories of fatal and serious injury. The category covers any incident in which a worker’s body, or part of it, is compressed, pinched, squeezed, or pulled into equipment or structures.
In industrial settings, some of the most common workplace injuries occur across a wide range of equipment types and work scenarios:
Conveyor Belt Crush Injuries
Conveyor systems are a common cause of caught-in injuries in warehouses, manufacturing plants, food processing facilities, and distribution centers. Workers’ hands, fingers, arms, and clothing can be pulled into the belt’s moving components, drive rollers, tail pulleys, take-up mechanisms, and pinch points where the belt meets the frame, with little to no warning. The pulling force of a conveyor system is often powerful enough to cause degloving injuries, fractures, amputations, and crush injuries to the upper extremity in a fraction of a second.
Press Machine Crush Injuries
Hydraulic and mechanical presses, stamping presses, punch presses, power presses, and forming presses generate extreme compressive force by design. When a worker’s hand, arm, or body is inside the machine at the point of operation during a cycle, the result is typically a catastrophic crush injury, often involving shattered bones, traumatic amputation, or permanent loss of function. Inadequate machine guarding, sensor failures, and improper lockout/tagout procedures are frequent contributing factors.
Pinch Point Injuries
A pinch point is any location where a worker can be caught between a moving part and a stationary object, between two moving parts, or between a rotating component and another surface. Pinch points exist throughout industrial environments, in gear assemblies, belt drives, chain conveyors, rotating shafts, and robotic equipment. Injuries at pinch points commonly affect fingers, hands, and forearms, and can range from severe lacerations and fractures to degloving and amputation.
Roll Nip Injuries
Calenders, rolling mills, paper machines, textile equipment, and similar roller-based machinery create nip points, the gap where two counter-rotating rollers meet. These nip points generate enormous pulling force and can drag an entire limb through the rollers in an instant. Roll nip injuries frequently cause crush fractures, circumferential burns from friction, degloving, and limb loss.
Auger and Screw Conveyor Entrapments
Augers and screw conveyors are used in agriculture, food processing, mining, and bulk material handling to move material through a tube or trough. When a worker contacts an exposed rotating auger, the spiral flights can grab clothing or limbs and wind them in rapidly, causing severe rotational injuries, fractures, and traumatic amputation.
Caught Between Moving Equipment and Fixed Structures
Workers can be pinned between forklifts and racking, between mobile machinery and walls, or between vehicles and fixed structures on industrial floors. These incidents can cause internal organ damage, spinal injuries, rib fractures, and blunt force trauma to multiple body regions simultaneously.
The Severity of Industrial Crush Injuries
Crush injuries sustained in workplace accidents are medically distinct from other types of workplace injuries. The compressive force involved can damage multiple tissue layers at once—skin, muscle, bone, nerves, and blood vessels—often creating injuries whose full extent is not apparent until hours or days after the incident.
Workers who survive caught-in and caught-between workplace accidents frequently face:
- Traumatic amputations or partial amputations requiring surgical revision
- Crush syndrome, in which the release of damaged muscle tissue after prolonged compression causes systemic toxicity and can lead to kidney failure
- Compartment syndrome, a dangerous increase in pressure within muscle compartments that requires emergency surgical intervention
- Complex fractures requiring hardware, multiple surgeries, and extended rehabilitation
- Permanent nerve damage resulting in chronic pain, loss of sensation, or loss of motor function
- Degloving injuries, in which skin and soft tissue are separated from the underlying structures
- Psychological trauma, including PTSD, which is common among workers who have experienced sudden and violent traumatic injury
Workers’ Compensation and Third-Party Claims for Crush Injuries
Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation system provides benefits to injured industrial workers regardless of fault, covering medical treatment, lost wages, specific loss benefits for permanent loss of a body part, and disfigurement compensation. For workers who have suffered a caught-in or caught-between injury, these benefits can be substantial, but they are also frequently contested.
Insurers and employers often dispute the extent of long-term disability, push for early return to work before a worker has genuinely recovered, and resist authorizing the specialized surgical care and long-term rehabilitation that crush injuries require. Beyond workers’ compensation, a third-party workers’ compensation claim may be available if your injury was caused or contributed to by:
- A manufacturer that produced equipment with inadequate guarding or a design defect
- A maintenance contractor that improperly serviced or failed to repair known equipment hazards
- A property owner who failed to maintain occupational safety measures on a construction site where you were working as a contractor
Our personal injury lawyers will evaluate every dimension of your personal injury case to pursue the maximum recovery available to you.
Contact Us for a Free Consultation to Learn How You Can File a Workers’ Compensation Claim After a Workplace Accident
Since 2010, Pond Lehocky has recovered over $1 billion for injured workers and handled more than 100,000 cases, including workers who suffered the most severe and complicated industrial injuries. We understand the medical realities of caught-in and caught-between workplace accidents, and we know the arguments insurers use to minimize what they pay.
If you have been hurt by heavy machinery, do not wait. Contact Pond Lehocky today for a free consultation. There are no upfront fees; you pay nothing unless we win your case.
