Start here: no, they do not get to dump this on your health insurance and call it a day

If you were delivering groceries in Fishers, walked onto or near a construction area, and got lit up by a live wire because nobody had proper lockout/tagout in place, this is already a mess.

If Instacart, a site supervisor, or anyone else is telling you to just run the bills through your own health insurance and move on, that's a giant red flag.

Especially if your leg, arm, hand, or nervous system got wrecked.

In Indiana, lockout/tagout failures are serious because somebody was supposed to control hazardous energy before anyone got near that wire. On a busy site near State Road 37, Allisonville Road, or one of the endless work zones feeding into I-69, shortcuts happen fast. And when a delivery worker is the one burned or thrown, every company involved suddenly starts pretending you were just "there" and therefore somehow not their problem.

That's bullshit.

The first mistake: believing the "just use your own insurance" line

Most people don't realize what that really means.

Your health insurance may pay some treatment upfront. It does not decide fault. It does not protect your injury claim. And it definitely does not mean the construction company, subcontractor, property owner, or any commercial insurer is off the hook.

Worse, if your health plan pays for ER care, surgery, skin grafts, cardiac monitoring, or follow-up neuro treatment, that insurer may later want reimbursement from any settlement. So if you quietly use your own coverage because somebody pressured you, you can end up with all the pain and a reimbursement fight on top of it.

The pressure usually comes wrapped in fake helpfulness.

"File it under your insurance so treatment isn't delayed." "Instacart doesn't cover this." "The cops didn't cite anybody." "There's no workers' comp because you're an independent contractor."

That last part is where people freeze. Yes, Instacart shoppers are usually treated as independent contractors, not employees. That means this often is not a standard Indiana workers' comp claim against Instacart. But that does not erase a third-party injury claim against whoever left a live electrical hazard on that site.

The second mistake: not locking down proof of the hazard immediately

Electric injury cases turn ugly because the scene changes fast.

By the next morning, the wire is dead, the panel is closed, the warning tape appears like magic, and everyone acts like safety rules were always followed.

You need to preserve what existed before the cleanup story starts. In Fishers, on commercial buildouts around 116th Street, Olio Road, or those fast-growing retail strips, contractors move fast and erase faster.

The evidence that matters most is boring stuff people forget:

• photos of the exact area, exposed wire, equipment, cones, barriers, panels, and signage
• names of the general contractor, electrical subcontractor, property owner, and any witnesses
• ER records describing electrical burns, entry and exit wounds, loss of consciousness, muscle damage, or cardiac symptoms
• your phone location history, delivery app timeline, and order records showing why you were there

If you wait, somebody else controls the story.

The third mistake: assuming no police citation means no case

Cops in Indiana are not OSHA. They are not insurance coverage lawyers either.

If Fishers police didn't cite anyone, that tells you almost nothing about whether the site was unsafe or whether a contractor violated basic lockout/tagout procedures. A non-citation is not a free pass.

Here's what most people screw up next: they stop pushing because they think the lack of a ticket killed the claim.

It didn't.

The weird commercial policy gap is where this gets expensive

This is the part insurance companies hope you never understand.

A construction company can have a big commercial general liability policy and still fight coverage for an electrocution. Some policies carve out injuries tied to electrical operations, ongoing work by subcontractors, utility-related hazards, or damage arising from certain jobsite operations unless separate endorsements exist.

So you hear, "There's a million-dollar policy," and think the money is there.

Maybe. Maybe not.

If the electrical subcontractor's policy excludes this exact type of live-wire loss, the general contractor points at the sub, the sub points at the property owner, and the property owner points at your health insurer. Meanwhile your bills stack up.

That coverage fight is not some side issue. It can shape the whole case.

The fourth mistake: giving a neat little statement before your injuries settle out

After an electrocution, symptoms can get worse.

Nerve pain. Muscle weakness. Sleep issues. Memory problems. Heart rhythm concerns. Burns that deepen. Falls caused by the shock that break bones in the process.

If you give a recorded statement too early, you'll usually minimize it without meaning to. People say dumb honest things like, "I'm okay, just shaken up," before the second surgery gets scheduled.

The adjuster doesn't give a damn about your timeline.

In Indiana, especially with heavy commercial traffic and constant work zones from Fishers down toward Indianapolis, insurers handle these claims every day. Same with major employer corridors elsewhere in the state, whether it's shift traffic around Subaru in Lafayette or industrial contractors tied to northwest Indiana mill work in Gary and East Chicago. They know confusion helps them.

You need your treatment records to catch up to reality before you let anyone box your injury into a quick narrative.

The fifth mistake: forgetting Instacart data can help you

A lot of injured shoppers think the app only hurts them because it labels them independent contractors.

Not always.

Your batch acceptance, timestamps, GPS trail, delivery notes, and customer address history can prove you were lawfully on the property for a delivery and not wandering through a restricted area for no reason. That matters when the defense starts hinting you "shouldn't have been there."

That argument gets used all the time because it's cheap and effective.

Don't let your own phone data disappear while everyone else is preserving theirs.