Most construction injuries announce themselves. A fall, a load that shifts, a machine that moves when somebody thought it was off. There's noise, there's a scene, and everyone on the crew knows instantly what happened.
Electrical injuries are quieter, and they are far worse than they look.
A crane's boom drifts a few feet too far and touches an overhead distribution line. A laborer carries a length of aluminum ladder upright across a lot. Somebody plugs into a temporary panel a different trade wired that morning. A drill bit finds conduit inside a wall that was supposed to be dead. In every one of those, the injury is invisible until it isn't.
Why these cases are different from other jobsite injuries
Two things set electrical injuries apart, and both matter enormously to the injured worker and his family.
The damage runs deeper than the burn. Current travels through the body and takes an internal path. The entry and exit wounds on the skin can look small next to what happened to muscle, nerve, and heart along the way. Workers who "walked away" have serious cardiac, neurological, and cognitive problems that surface later — memory, concentration, chronic nerve pain, depression. An arc flash adds a second mechanism entirely: an intense burst of heat and pressure that causes severe burns, blast injury, hearing loss, and eye damage. Anyone who takes a shock of any size on a jobsite needs evaluation, not a chair in the shade for twenty minutes.
There is almost always more than one company involved. That is the part injured workers most often miss.
Who besides your employer may answer for it
Nebraska's workers' compensation system is generally where you start after a work injury, and it covers medical treatment and wage benefits without anyone having to prove fault. But comp is not the whole picture on a construction site — because a construction site is a crowd of separate businesses working in the same hundred feet of dirt.
Depending on the facts, the parties whose conduct deserves a hard look include:
- The general contractor or construction manager, whose job includes coordinating the trades and site conditions.
- The electrical contractor that installed, energized, de-energized, or was supposed to have locked out the circuit.
- Another subcontractor whose crew created the hazard — the temporary wiring, the unsecured panel, the excavation near a buried line.
- The utility that owns an overhead or underground line, and the locating service that marked, or didn't mark, what was in the ground.
- The equipment manufacturer or rental company if a machine's insulation, proximity warning, or controls failed.
- The property owner if the hazard was a condition of the premises nobody disclosed.
When someone other than your employer bears responsibility, that can be a separate claim alongside the comp claim — the same structure I explain on my page about third-party claims when you're injured while working, and the same dynamic that runs through equipment and struck-by injuries on Nebraska jobsites. Which of those parties actually bears responsibility is a fact question, and it depends on evidence — contracts, safety plans, daily logs, locate tickets, equipment records — that starts disappearing quickly.
What helps, starting the same week
Get the medical evaluation, including cardiac and neurological, even if you feel fine. Report the injury in writing. Photograph the location, the equipment, and the conditions before the site changes — and jobsites change fast. Write down every company that was working within sight of you that day, and the names of anyone who saw it. Keep your own copies. If the family is facing the worst version of this, my wrongful death page explains how those claims work.
Why bring this to me
These cases are won by finding the other companies and proving what they did, and that work has to start before the site is cleaned up and the equipment goes back on a truck. As an Omaha work injury lawyer, I move early on jobsite cases — preserving evidence, running down the contract chain, and preparing the case to be tried rather than shopped. That's the work behind more than $23 million recovered for my clients, a $5.4 million top result, and the five-star reviews my clients wrote themselves. My firm was voted Best of Omaha for personal injury law in 2025 and again in 2026.
If you or someone in your family was shocked, burned, or hurt by an arc flash on a Nebraska or Iowa jobsite, call me at (402) 378-9208 or reach out here. The consultation is free, and there's no fee unless I win your case.
Frequently asked questions
- Why are electrical injuries different from other jobsite injuries?
- Current travels through the body and takes an internal path. The entry and exit wounds on the skin can look small next to what happened to muscle, nerve, and heart along the way. Anyone who takes a shock of any size on a jobsite needs evaluation, not a chair in the shade for twenty minutes.
- Who besides my employer may be responsible for a jobsite electrocution?
- Nebraska's workers' compensation system is generally where you start after a work injury, and it covers medical treatment and wage benefits without anyone having to prove fault. But comp is not the whole picture on a construction site — because a construction site is a crowd of separate businesses working in the same hundred feet of dirt.
- What should I do after an electrical injury on a jobsite?
- Get the medical evaluation, including cardiac and neurological, even if you feel fine. Report the injury in writing. Photograph the location, the equipment, and the conditions before the site changes — and jobsites change fast.
- Why does a jobsite electrocution case need to start early?
- These cases are won by finding the other companies and proving what they did, and that work has to start before the site is cleaned up and the equipment goes back on a truck.
Your Attorney
Frank Younes
Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.
More about Frank → · Free consultation: (402) 378-9208