Introduction: When Workers’ Comp Isn’t Enough

What happens when you are injured on the job, but the person who caused the accident doesn’t work for your employer? This is the realm of “Third-Party Claims,” and navigating it requires a tag-team of legal experts. In this episode of The Jeffrey Gross Show, host Jeffrey Gross is joined by Rich Godshall (the “OG” of OG Law) to discuss how workers’ compensation and personal injury lawsuits work together to provide a financial safety net for injured workers.

Key Insights from the Broadcast:

• The “First” vs. “Third” Party: Jeff clarifies that you and your employer are the “first party.” A “third party” is any outside entity—like a negligent driver or a manufacturer of faulty equipment—responsible for your injury.
• The Trucking “Moving Computer”: Rich Godshall breaks down the complexity of trucking accidents. From downloading black box data to investigating the “Bill of Lading” and negligent hiring practices, learn why these cases require aggressive, resource-heavy investigation.
• The Strategy of Sequencing: Discover why filing a lawsuit too early can actually hurt your case. Jeff and Rich discuss how maximizing your initial workers’ comp benefits provides the “breathing room” needed to hold out for a larger personal injury settlement.
• Medical Malpractice Within a Claim: What happens if a physical therapist accidentally worsens your injury? Jeff shares a real-world case of a spinal implant disengagement and explains how a work injury can “blossom” into a secondary malpractice claim.
• No Out-of-Pocket Costs: Both firms operate on a contingency basis, meaning the lawyers take on all the financial risk—paying for experts and records—so the client can focus on recovery.

Contact Gross & Kenny LLP: Call Jeff Gross directly on his cell: 215-512-1500 or visit.

Transcript

Date: July 14, 2025

Host: Jeffrey Gross, Esq. (Gross & Kenny LLP)

Co-Host: Joe Dougherty

Guest: Rich Godshall, Esq. (Managing Partner, Ostroff Godshall / OG Law)

Joe Dougherty: All right, ladies and gentlemen, around the Delaware Valley, welcome to the Jeff Gross Show here on WWDB Talk 860. We’ve got a fantastic broadcast. Jeff Gross, how are you, sir?

Jeffrey Gross: I’m good, Joe. How are you?

Joe Dougherty: I cannot complain. You have a good Fourth of July? As you know, it’s my birthday. Did you get my birthday wishes?

Jeffrey Gross: I did. Thank you very much.

Joe Dougherty: I was getting on the elevator today at the Philadelphia School District and a lady said to me, “Man, time flies.” It’s a cliché, but 61 hit me like a ton of bricks. It just flies by. Before we get into all that, I want to bring in Rich Godshall, who’s the managing partner with Ostroff Godshall. How are you, buddy?

Rich Godshall: Joe, how are you doing? Good to see you again.

Joe Dougherty: It’s a pleasure having you on the broadcast. How was your Fourth of July weekend?

Rich Godshall: It was good. We went to a Phillies game on Saturday. Saw Ranger pitch, which is fun to watch.

Joe Dougherty: He’s having a great year. They just picked the All-Stars, and neither him nor Sanchez made it. Neither did Trea Turner.

Jeffrey Gross: I think that’s a good thing. Why should we get these guys ruining their arms for no reason?

Joe Dougherty: You got a point. How about Wheeler’s one-hitter?

Jeffrey Gross: Yeah, one hit was a home run, though.

Joe Dougherty: It was not only a one-hitter; it would have been a perfect game. Wheeler pitched an incredible game, and he deserves to be there. By the way, he’s the highest-paid pitcher in the history of the game at 42 million a year, and he’s not folding under the pressure. What I like about Suarez is that he’s throwing 90 miles an hour—you don’t see that anymore. Everybody’s throwing 100, but he’s pitching the corners. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

Rich Godshall: And you watch how he paces himself, too. He’s very deliberate. Everything he does is at the same pace.

Joe Dougherty: We need some bats, but we also need some bullpen help. If you had a choice before the trade deadline, what would you go for?

Rich Godshall: I would go bats. The last couple years we won games in the playoffs, but we need runs.

Joe Dougherty: I think it should be arms. If you’re down five-nothing, guys are pressing. We need middle relievers.

Jeffrey Gross: As far as the bats go, they’re always swinging for the stars. They never play small ball or hit strategically to get on base.

Joe Dougherty: It’s the way the game is today. Imagine schmitty [Mike Schmidt] making today’s money. Dave Kingman—King Kong—would be prolific today hitting 35 home runs with a .215 average. He’d be making 300 million dollars! Aaron Judge is a monster, a freak. Baseball is a game of failure, except if you’re a closer.

Jeffrey Gross: They all make me nervous, the closers. Alvarado, I mean…

Joe Dougherty: He’s shaky. The bases are loaded before you finish your drink. We were spoiled with Lidge; we’re never going to have that again.

Jeffrey Gross: Remember when Ryan Howard dropped on his knees? That’s what hurt him.

Joe Dougherty: Give me five greatest sports moments in Philadelphia history. Jeff, you first.

Jeffrey Gross: One of the greatest things I’ve seen is when Saquon [Barkley] did that jump over the defenseman. To watch it in real time was unbelievable.

Joe Dougherty: I coach running backs; there are only a couple of guys who could make that move. My top five: Number one is Tug McGraw throwing the last pitch in 1980. Then Pete Rose catching Bob Boone’s dropped ball. And of course, the Eagles Super Bowls. I went to the one in 2017 and the one in Arizona in 2022. That was a bad ending. I sat in front of the TV in 1980 for the Super Bowl against the Raiders, but that was over before it started.

Rich Godshall: I was born in 1980. My first memory was the Phillies losing in ’93 with Mitch Williams.

Jeffrey Gross: In 1980 I was in eighth grade. When the Phillies won, I won a ball signed by all the Phillies in a raffle. It was the greatest thing.

Joe Dougherty: The Joe Carter home run in ’93 is still the most painful thing.

Jeffrey Gross: I remember they used to throw crazy pitches when I was a kid. My grandfather explained they were doing it on purpose.

Joe Dougherty: Wheeler was one pitch away from a perfect game yesterday. Harper is hard to watch right now because you can feel the heaviness on him. We’re going to need him to finish this season. All right guys, Jeff, remind our listeners about your firm.

Jeffrey Gross: My firm is Gross & Kenny. We handle all workers’ compensation claims only for the injured worker. I’ve been doing this for 35 years exclusively.

Joe Dougherty: And Rich Godshall, you bought your firm from John Ostroff.

Rich Godshall: Ostroff Godshall—OG Law. We do car crashes, slip and falls, and truck crashes. I worked with John for 10 years and bought him out three years ago. Our website is oglaw.com and our number is 888-OG-LAWYERS.

Joe Dougherty: Jeff, talk about the types of personal injury you handle.

Rich Godshall: We concentrate on when someone gets hurt but not at work—car crashes, catastrophic truck crashes, or incidents at a store.

Joe Dougherty: What is it like sitting in the office at six o’clock when everyone is gone?

Jeffrey Gross: That’s when I get all my stuff done, when nobody is bothering me!

Rich Godshall: I enjoy working cases, but running the business is less enjoyable. We’ve been building systems so I can delegate, but you have to trust people to make mistakes and move on. We have 10 attorneys. Success starts with the team.

Jeffrey Gross: The support staff is the backbone. You need them for filings and discovery.

Joe Dougherty: Angela at Jeff’s office is unbelievable. She takes ownership like she owns the firm. It’s easier to find a brain surgeon on Market Street than a team member like that. Let’s talk about third-party cases. What are they?

Rich Godshall: A third-party case is when your employer is not responsible—like getting hit by a car while you’re driving for work.

Jeffrey Gross: I tell clients: you and your employer are the first party. “Third” refers to another party responsible for the accident. You can’t sue your employer for negligence due to workers’ comp immunity, but the Act allows you to sue a third party.

Joe Dougherty: Describe the dynamic.

Jeffrey Gross: Many times, a client thinks they only have a claim against the guy who hit them. I explain that workers’ comp is the first step. The third-party claim is dependent on the comp claim. The larger the comp claim, the larger the subrogation lien, but also the exponentially higher the value of the third-party case.

Joe Dougherty: For example, an ironworker falls in a hole. If he dug it, it’s just comp. If someone else dug it, it’s a third-party case. Let’s look at trucking accidents.

Jeffrey Gross: The initial decision is where to bring the claim. If it happened in PA and you work for a PA company, it’s a PA comp claim, even if the accident was out of state.

Rich Godshall: First, I look at the county. If it’s Philly, we file in Philly. If it’s a smaller county, we look at where the trucking companies do business. Trucking cases are complex. You start with the truck—they are like moving computers now. We download the data for movement and speed. Then you look at the DOT number and the bill of lading to see who loaded the trailer and if it was done right.

Jeffrey Gross: I can get a lot of investigation done through the comp carrier because they want their money back via subrogation. They want a successful third-party claim.

Rich Godshall: Exactly. If the lawyers work together with the carrier’s investigation, it gels. There are many negligent parties in trucking—the driver, the people who loaded the cargo, and the broker who hired a small company without due diligence.

Joe Dougherty: Communication between lawyers seems vital.

Jeffrey Gross: My third-party attorneys and I are usually on a text chain. We bounce ideas back and forth informally but effectively.

Rich Godshall: Timing and sequence are key—knowing which doctors the client likes or if a co-worker was a witness. If the comp case resolves at the right time in conjunction with the third-party case, it’s very beneficial. Conflicting strategies undermine credibility.

Jeffrey Gross: If the subrogation lien is mismanaged, the client receives less money. Insurance companies also use ISO searches to find old claims our clients might have forgotten about from 20 years ago.

Joe Dougherty: Can a denied workers’ comp claim impact the personal injury case?

Jeffrey Gross: Absolutely. The third-party case is predicated on a successful comp claim. If a judge says the injury isn’t related to the accident, you have a causation problem in the third-party case. Strategy is everything. PA allows two years for the statute of limitations. Sometimes we hold off on filing the third-party suit until we maximize the comp claim value so the third-party defense can’t undermine it.

Rich Godshall: It’s about sequencing. If we maximize the first-party benefit, it gives the client money to survive while we wait to settle the larger case.

Joe Dougherty: Financial stress is a huge factor. Rich, you understood this firsthand when your dad was hurt.

Rich Godshall: Yeah, he was a construction worker hurt on the job. I was in law school, my sister was starting college, and my dad was in the hospital without a paycheck. You lose a paycheck for a month and you panic. That’s why getting comp benefits quickly is so important for breathing room.

Jeffrey Gross: Uncertainty creates more panic than the actual problem. I tell my clients: sit back, I’m the bus driver. I can get you funding from third-party sources if needed to make sure you have recoveries from both comp and the third-party claim.

Rich Godshall: We have an app at our firm that keeps clients up to date on milestones because unknowns cause stress.

Joe Dougherty: What happens if someone receives negligent medical care during their recovery?

Jeffrey Gross: This happens all the time. I have a case now where a client with a spinal cord implant was being massaged too hard during therapy. The implant disengaged, his legs gave out on a treadmill, and he fractured his collarbone. Because he was treating for a work injury, it enhances the workers’ comp claim, but there is also a medical malpractice case against the therapist. The comp carrier will fight paying for the new injuries, but I use their own defense doctors as my experts to prove what happened.

Joe Dougherty: Rich, talk to the listener who thinks they can’t afford an attorney.

Rich Godshall: Everything we do is contingency. The firm pays for experts, medical records, and investigation upfront. If we don’t recover, you don’t get a bill.

Jeffrey Gross: Same here, though Rich’s percentage is 33 and a third, and mine is 20%.

Rich Godshall: You want your lawyer to be aggressive. Aggression costs money, and we put the resources in to build a better case.

Jeffrey Gross: I can often spend money on Rich’s investigation and get it back from the comp carrier so it doesn’t impact our client’s bottom line.

Joe Dougherty: Rich, contact info?

Rich Godshall: og-law.com or rich@og-law.com.

Jeffrey Gross: My cell is 215-512-1500 and https://www.google.com/search?q=phila-workers-comp.com.

Joe Dougherty: Thanks for listening, everybody.