It was the end of a long shift at the pharmacy counter. A customer who had been told his prescription was not ready came back twenty minutes later, angrier, and came over the counter. You remember the shelf hitting your back and the floor coming up fast. The next clear memory is a paramedic asking you what day it is.
A week later, with a concussion diagnosis and a bruise that still covers half your arm, the questions start. Who pays for this? Does workers’ compensation cover it? Can I sue the man who did it? What about the store, which had been told about him before?
Those are the questions a workplace assault lawyer sorts through, and the answers in Massachusetts depend on a few facts that are easy to overlook in the first days: who attacked you, why, where it happened, and who was responsible for keeping that space safe. Getting those facts straight early can be the difference between one limited claim and several.
This piece walks through how those claims fit together. It sits within the broader picture of personal injury claims in Boston, but assaults at work have a structure of their own, because the workers’ compensation system sits right in the middle of them.
What a workplace assault lawyer looks at first
Before anyone talks about money, a lawyer needs the shape of what happened.
Was the attack connected to the job?
Massachusetts workers’ compensation covers a personal injury that arises out of and in the course of your employment. Those words carry a lot of weight in assault cases.
An attack that grows out of the work itself fits that description more naturally. The customer angry about a refund. The patient who lashes out during care. The robbery at the register. The passenger who turns on the driver. Those risks come with the job.
An attack rooted in a purely personal dispute that happened to play out at work is harder to place, and whether it counts as a work injury becomes a real question. The answer matters, because it decides which doors are open to you.
There are gray areas in between. An attack in the employer’s parking lot as you arrive for a shift. A confrontation that started over a work decision and turned personal. A former coworker who shows up after being let go. Each of these can go either way depending on the details, and the details are exactly what the insurer will look at if it decides to dispute the claim. Write down how the situation started, not just how it ended.
Who did it
The identity of the attacker changes the analysis more than almost anything else.
A customer, client, patient, or stranger is not your employer, and a claim against that person is not blocked by the workers’ compensation system. A coworker or supervisor is different, and the rules about suing a fellow employee depend on the kind of conduct involved. More on both below.
Write down everything you know about the person while it is fresh: a name if you have one, what they looked like, what they said, whether they had been in before, and whether anyone had complained about them.
Where it happened and who controlled the space
Many workplaces are not owned by the employer. A store sits in a shopping center run by a property company. A cleaning crew works overnight in an office tower managed by someone else. A delivery driver spends the day at loading docks run by other companies. A security guard is employed by one company and posted at another company’s building.
That matters because the company that controls a space may have its own responsibility for security, lighting, access, and the warnings it received. Those companies are not your employer, and a claim against them can sit alongside your compensation benefits rather than being replaced by them.
Workers’ compensation after an attack at work
For most employees, compensation is the first and most reliable source of help.
The benefits route
Workers’ compensation pays benefits for a covered work injury without anyone having to prove the employer did something wrong. That is its great strength. Medical treatment and partial wage replacement can begin while the rest of the situation is still being sorted out.
It also has limits. It does not pay for pain and suffering in the way an injury lawsuit can, and the wage benefits replace only part of what you were earning. For a serious assault, that gap can be large. The comp system has its own process, its own hearings, and its own disputes, and a workers’ compensation lawyer in Boston handles that side.
Insurers do sometimes resist assault claims. The usual argument is that the attack was personal rather than work-related, or that the injuries were not as serious as claimed. When that happens, the dispute goes through the state’s workers’ compensation agency, with its own conferences and hearings. Medical records that describe the assault clearly, an incident report written at the time, and witnesses who saw what led up to it are what carry a claim through that process.
Why you usually cannot sue your employer
Under Massachusetts law, an employee who did not reserve the right in writing when hired is treated as having given up the right to sue the employer in court for an injury that compensation covers. Few workers ever give that written notice, so for most workers the employer itself is reachable only through the comp system.
That surprises people, especially when the employer ignored obvious warning signs. You told your manager the customer had threatened you last week, and nothing changed. It feels like that should be the basis of a lawsuit against the employer. In most cases, the remedy against the employer is still compensation, and the warning becomes important evidence in claims against others.
The family members of an employee who did not reserve that right are generally bound by the same choice when it comes to claims against the employer.
Reporting it at work
Report the attack to your employer as soon as you can, in writing if possible, and make sure an incident report exists. Get medical care and tell the provider plainly that you were assaulted at work.
Then keep copies. The incident report, your written notice, any emails or texts about the attack or about earlier threats, the names of coworkers who saw it. These are the documents that support both the compensation claim and any lawsuit against someone else.
If you are pressured to describe it as something else, a fall or a minor scuffle, do not. Say what happened. Accurate records protect you in both systems.
Suing the person who attacked you
Compensation does not shield the attacker. That is the piece many workers never hear about.
Assault and battery is a claim of its own
Being hit, shoved, choked, or threatened with imminent violence is a civil wrong in its own right, separate from any criminal case. You can bring a lawsuit against the person who did it, and that claim can include your medical expenses, lost income, and the pain and lasting effects of the attack.
The criminal case and the civil case run on separate tracks. A prosecutor decides whether to charge someone. You decide whether to sue. A conviction can help a civil case, but you do not need one to bring it, and the civil case uses a lower standard of proof. Our assault and battery lawyers in Boston handle these claims directly.
Expect the attacker to tell a different story. A frequent one is that you started it, or that they were defending themselves. That is why the first accounts matter so much: what you told the police, what witnesses said before they talked to each other, what the camera shows. A person who was cornered behind a counter and then hit has a very different case from a mutual shoving match, and the evidence usually shows which one it was.
When the attacker is a coworker
Here the law draws a careful line. Massachusetts generally protects a fellow employee from being sued for ordinary negligence on the job, such as carelessly dropping something on you, when both of you were acting in the course of your employment.
Intentional violence is treated differently. The state’s highest court has held that the compensation system’s exclusivity rules did not bar an employee’s assault and battery claim against a coworker, where the conduct had nothing to do with the employer’s interests. The court reasoned that protecting a coworker who commits an intentional wrong of that kind would not serve the purposes behind the compensation system.
The court also left room for harder cases, noting that an intentional act by an employee whose job involves force, such as a security officer, might in some circumstances be so connected to the employer’s interests that the analysis changes. Where a supervisor or coworker simply attacked you, though, a direct claim against that person is often available.
When the attack came at the end of a pattern, such as months of threats, intimidation, or harassment from the same person, other legal protections can come into play as well, some of them outside personal injury law altogether. Keep every message, note who witnessed earlier incidents, and keep copies of anything you reported to a manager or human resources. Those records support whichever claims turn out to fit.
Collecting from an individual
A claim against the person who hit you is only as good as what can actually be collected. Some attackers have assets or insurance that responds. Many do not, and insurance policies often exclude harm a person causes on purpose.
That does not make the claim pointless. A judgment can be enforced over time, and a civil case can produce evidence that matters against other parties. But it is one reason a lawyer will look hard at whether anyone else shares responsibility for the attack.
Third parties who may share responsibility
This is often where the real recovery is found.
Comp and a third-party claim, together
Massachusetts law says plainly that when a work injury happens under circumstances that make someone other than the employer legally liable, the employee can collect compensation benefits and still pursue that other party. You do not have to choose between them.
In assault cases, those other parties can include the attacker, a company that controlled the premises, a security contractor, or a business whose own employee was the one who attacked you. Each claim stands on its own facts.
The company that controlled the premises
When an assault happens in a space someone else owns or manages, that company’s choices about security can matter a great deal. Was there a history of violence at the location? Were there complaints about the same person? Were lights out, locks broken, cameras disabled, or guards cut back? Did the company know and do nothing?
Those questions are the heart of what lawyers call negligent security. We have written about it separately in our piece on negligent security and who pays when you are assaulted. In a workplace setting, the key is that the premises owner is not your employer, so the compensation system does not block the claim.
Picture a night-shift worker at a store in a commercial plaza, attacked in the rear lot while taking out the trash. The lights over the back door had been out for weeks, the plaza’s manager had been told, and there had been two prior robberies behind the same row of shops. The worker’s employer is reached through compensation. The plaza’s owner and its security contractor are a separate matter entirely, and their knowledge of the dark lot and the earlier incidents is the core of that claim.
In a claim like this, the defense may argue that you were partly at fault, perhaps for confronting the person or for leaving a secure area. Massachusetts lets you recover as long as you were not more than 50 percent at fault, with your damages reduced by your share. At 51 percent or more, the claim is barred.
Security companies and contractors
Many buildings hire outside security. When a guard company was supposed to control access, patrol, or respond to trouble and did not, its failures may be part of the case.
The contract between the security company and the property owner often spells out exactly what the company promised to do. That document, along with post orders, staffing records, and incident logs, is the kind of evidence that has to be requested early, before it is lost or overwritten.
That contract also sets realistic limits. A guard posted at a front desk is not expected to prevent every crime anywhere in a building. The question is narrower: what the company agreed to do, whether it did it, and whether doing it would likely have prevented what happened to you. A guard who was supposed to walk the rear lot every hour and had not been there all night is a very different case from one who was at the assigned post and could not have seen the attack.
When the attacker was a customer, patient, or member of the public
Some jobs put workers face to face with angry or unstable people every day. The law does not treat that risk as something you simply accepted.
Jobs where the public is part of the risk
Retail clerks, pharmacy staff, bus and train operators, rideshare drivers, hospital and nursing home staff, social workers, security officers, and restaurant workers all deal with the public in ways that can turn violent without warning.
In those jobs, an attack by a member of the public is usually connected to the work, which tends to support a compensation claim. The same facts can also support a claim against the attacker and, depending on the setting, against a company that controlled the space and ignored the risk.
Healthcare workers face a particular version of this. Nurses, aides, and technicians are sometimes hurt by patients, and it is tempting to treat that as simply part of the job. It may be a work injury, which supports a compensation claim. Whether anyone else is responsible depends on the setting: who ran the facility, what was known about the patient, and whether staffing, training, and security matched the risk. Hospitals and care facilities usually keep internal incident reports, and those records can be important.
Was the attack foreseeable?
Claims against a premises owner or security company usually turn on what they knew. A first-ever incident with no warning is harder. A pattern of prior attacks, police calls, complaints, or threats from the same person is much stronger.
That information is often scattered. Coworkers remember earlier incidents. Managers have emails. Police departments have call logs. Property managers keep incident reports. A lawyer’s early work is pulling those threads together before memories fade and records are discarded.
If you are still working in a place where threats are a regular part of the day, put your concerns in writing now, to your manager and, where there is one, to the property manager or security company. You should not have to. But a written warning that goes unanswered is exactly the kind of record that matters if something happens later, and it sometimes prompts the change that keeps it from happening at all.
When you were the customer, not the worker
The rules work differently when the roles are reversed. If you were a customer or visitor attacked by someone else’s employee, the question becomes whether that business is responsible for its employee’s conduct. That is a separate analysis, and we cover it in our piece on when a business is responsible for an employee who attacks someone.
The distinction matters because a worker’s claim runs through compensation first, while a customer’s claim goes straight to the business and the person who attacked them.
Injuries, evidence, and deadlines
The legal structure matters, but so do the injuries and the proof.
The injuries these attacks cause
Assaults at work produce a wide range of injuries. Blows to the head and falls against counters or floors can cause concussions and more serious traumatic brain injuries, which are easy to underestimate because the symptoms can be subtle at first. Broken bones in the face, hands, and wrists can result. So are back and shoulder injuries from being shoved or restrained.
Many people also struggle afterward with fear, sleeplessness, and anxiety about going back to work, particularly to the same location. Tell your doctor about those effects. They are part of the injury, not a separate weakness.
Head injuries deserve particular attention. A person who was hit and fell can seem fine for the first day and then notice headaches, trouble concentrating, light sensitivity, or mood changes. If anything like that appears, go back to the doctor and say so. Early documentation of those symptoms, and testing where a doctor recommends it, can make a large difference later if the effects linger.
Time away from work is often the largest practical loss. Compensation replaces only part of your wages, and a claim against a third party can include what compensation does not, which is explained further in our guide to a lost wages injury claim.
The evidence that matters
Video is often decisive, and it often disappears. Many stores, garages, and office buildings keep footage for a short time before recording over it. A written request to preserve it should go out quickly.
Beyond video, the important records are the incident report, the police report, medical records from the first visit forward, witness names, any record of prior threats or incidents involving the same person, and the security contract and staffing records if a guard company was involved.
Keep a simple journal too. How you are sleeping, what you cannot do, which shifts you missed. It feels minor at the time. Months later, it is often the clearest account of what the attack actually cost you.
Be careful with insurance calls. You may hear from the compensation insurer, from the attacker’s insurer if there is one, and from an insurer for the property owner or security company. Answer the compensation insurer’s routine questions, but think twice before giving a recorded statement to any insurer for another party, and do not sign anything that releases claims without having it reviewed. Statements given in the first days, while you are hurting and unsure of the details, tend to be quoted back later.
Deadlines
A Massachusetts injury lawsuit generally has to be filed within three years. The compensation system has its own procedures and timelines, and reporting the injury to your employer promptly matters for that claim.
Running both tracks at once is normal. The compensation claim can move forward while a lawyer investigates the attacker, the premises, and any security company. Waiting for one to finish before starting the other is usually a mistake, because the evidence that matters for third-party claims is often the evidence that disappears first.
If the attack involved a public employer or happened on public property, other notice rules may apply, and they can be much shorter. Do not wait to find out.
This article is general information about Massachusetts law, not advice about your situation. If you were assaulted at work, you can contact Larson Law or call 508-888-8888 to talk through what happened and which claims may be open to you.
Reviewed and Approved By
This article was reviewed for legal accuracy by Daniel J. Larson, founder and principal attorney of Larson Law in Boston. He is a Massachusetts-barred personal injury lawyer who represents individuals and families harmed by negligence, including in motor-vehicle crashes, unsafe property conditions, and other preventable injuries. He builds every case with the expectation that it may be tried, through careful investigation, discovery, and expert development. Before founding the firm, he defended doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers in malpractice cases at a Boston firm, which shapes how he anticipates the defense’s view of a claim. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys.
Frequently asked questions
Does workers’ compensation cover an assault at work?
Often, yes, when the attack is connected to your job, such as a customer, patient, or robber who attacked you because of the work you were doing. Whether a particular attack qualifies depends on why it happened and the circumstances. Report it to your employer promptly and get medical care. If your claim is questioned, an attorney can help you show the connection to your work.
Can I sue my employer for not protecting me?
In most cases, no. Massachusetts generally treats employees as having given up the right to sue their employer for injuries covered by workers’ compensation unless they reserved that right in writing when hired. But the employer’s knowledge of earlier threats can still matter as evidence in claims against other parties, such as the attacker or a company that controlled the premises.
A coworker attacked me. Is that covered by the same rules?
Not entirely. Coworkers are generally protected from lawsuits over ordinary carelessness on the job, but Massachusetts courts have allowed assault and battery claims against a coworker whose intentional conduct had nothing to do with the employer’s interests. You may also have a compensation claim. How the two fit together depends on the facts, which is worth reviewing with a lawyer.
Should I wait for the criminal case to finish before doing anything?
No. The criminal case is controlled by the prosecutor and can take a long time. Evidence for a civil claim, especially video and records held by businesses, can disappear in the meantime. You can cooperate fully with the criminal case while a lawyer takes steps to preserve evidence and protect your civil claims.
The attack happened in a building my employer does not own. Does that matter?
It can matter a great deal. A company that owns or manages the property, or a security company hired to protect it, is not your employer, so a claim against it is not blocked by the compensation system. Whether such a claim is strong depends on what that company knew and what it did about the risk. An attorney can help find out.