What Do You Think: Did not Knowing Injury's Severity Extend Notice Period?

Levittown, PA (WorkersCompensation.com) – An employee who fails to timely notify his employer of a work-related injury may still be able to seek workers’ compensation benefits if he was unable to discover the injury at the time. 

But what if the worker knows he’s in pain at the time of the incident, but simply doesn’t yet know the nature or extent of the injury? A Pennsylvania court addressed whether such circumstances would lengthen the time for notifying the employer. 

On July 14, 2019, a chemical operator ran into an overhead pipe and jerked his neck backward. It hurt “pretty badly,” he said. But that he just “shook it off” and kept working. He didn’t tell anyone at the company about his injury. 

After the accident, the employee had tingling in his wrists and was diagnosed with carpel tunnel syndrome. Then he started to have head and neck pain. Several months later, he was diagnosed with cervical myelopathy, which he attributed to the workplace accident. 

The chemical operator reported the accident to the company in early 2020 and sought workers’ compensation benefits. A workers’ compensation judge dismissed the claim as untimely, and the operator appealed. 

Pennsylvania’s worker’s compensation law requires an employee to notify his employer of his injury within 120 days of the occurrence. Otherwise, the worker is not entitled to benefits.  

Under the "discovery rule," however, the 120-day period does not begin to run until an employee knows or has reason to know of the injury and its possible relationship to his employment. 

Was the operator’s claim untimely? 

A. No. The discovery rule applied because the employee didn’t know he had cervical myelopathy until much later, and he filed his claim shortly after that. 

B. Yes. When the incident occurred, he knew he had injured his neck and that it was because of his work that he injured himself. 

If you picked B, you agreed with the court in Twaroski v. BASF Corp., No. 742 C.D. 2021 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 08/30/22), which affirmed the WCJ’s dismissal of the case. 

The court pointed out that the employee testified that he did not tell his employer about the injury until early 2020, well outside of the 120-day period. 

Further, the court stated, the discovery rule did not apply under these circumstances. The chemical operator may not have known that he would end up with cervical myelopathy, the court remarked. But he did know that his neck hurt after walking into a pipe at work on July 14, 2019, and that was sufficient. That date was the date the employee knew, or should have known, that this injury was potentially work-related. Thus, it was the date that the 120-day period began to run, the court held. 

The court affirmed a worker’s compensation judge’s dismissal of the claim as untimely. 

This feature does not provide legal advice.

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