How Long After a Work Accident Can You Claim Injury in Pennsylvania?

Being hurt at work can set off a chain reaction of events that will take up all of your time for the next days or weeks.  If you were seriously hurt, you might now need to go to the hospital, stay there, undergo surgery, recover in the hospital, arrange childcare for your children, take time away from work, go to follow-up appointments, go to rehabilitation, adapt your home to your disabilities, and go to doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment.  However, if you want to get your injuries covered, you will need to get your claim started at some point in that busy schedule.

Injuries need to be reported to your employer within 120 days at the latest.  Even so, the Workers’ Comp Act contemplates that you should actually notify them within 21 days of the accident.  This deadline can get complicated if you are not filing a claim for an acute injury but rather an illness stemming from work conditions.  In many cases, the filing deadline for a lawsuit is longer, but injuries need to be reported within 120 days for Workers’ Comp to cover you.

For a free case assessment, call our Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation lawyers at Cardamone Law today at (267) 651-7945 and start your case right away.

Reporting Requirements for Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Coverage

If you do not report your injury to your employer, they cannot file a Workers’ Compensation claim, and you will never get the benefits you need.  Under the Workers’ Compensation Act – specifically § 311 – workers are required to report the work injury before 120 days runs out, or else the claim will not be filled.  However, the rule is a bit more detailed than this.

First, the law does technically say that reporting is not required if your employer already knows about the accident.  However, our Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation lawyers would recommend that injured workers never trust that their employer knows what happened or is going to be honest about the fact that they already knew of the injury.  Even if you talked to your manager right after the injury or they witnessed it happen, always make sure to follow up and report your injury the proper way so that you have clear, concrete proof that you did indeed report the accident in case your employer or the insurance carrier that handles your coverage tries to say you didn’t report the accident.

Second, the law does note that the employee or their family should report within 21 days, but it does place the ultimate, controlling cutoff point at 120 days.

In many cases, it is going to be difficult to report your accident in the immediate days and weeks following your accident, especially if you fell into a coma or were knocked out by painkillers for a number of days.  In many cases, your family or a representative can report the injury on your behalf.

Note that any delays are going to ultimately delay when you start receiving benefits, so while you might have around 4 months to file your claim, waiting that long could be a huge economic issue for you and your family, especially if you are still out of work.

When is Reporting Required for Work-Related Illnesses in Pennsylvania?

Picture this: you feel sick for a few days, and you just cannot seem to recover.  When you go to the doctor, they start to run some tests, and it is eventually discovered that you have cancer.  You later realize that this cancer was probably caused by your conditions at work.  For purposes of reporting your “accident” to your employer, what date is the “accident” supposed to have taken place?  When do you report an illness like this?

Under § 311, the Act seems to understand that there’s not necessarily one “accident” or moment of exposure that would cause cancer.  It also understands that many other illnesses and diseases work the same way: they develop over time, not from one event.

As such, the law here gives you a longer time to notify your employer, potentially going way beyond the 120-day limit.  The time to report your illness starts once you know about your illness and its “possible relationship to” your job.  From that point, you have 120 days to notify your boss.

This “discovery” issue also has a due diligence requirement.  What this means is that you cannot get a diagnosis and fail to look into its cause entirely.  You are expected to investigate what happened and think critically about your illness, avoiding any delays in connecting it to your work conditions.  What exactly is required is definitely up for debate, but our attorneys can document what you knew and when you knew it to help show that the steps you took to discover the cause of your illness were reasonable.  In any case, if you think that your cancer or other health condition might have happened because of work conditions, you should contact our attorneys sooner rather than later so that we can help you avoid missing any notification deadlines.

How Long Do You Have to File a Claim for Workplace Injuries in Pennsylvania

As mentioned, your injury needs to be reported to your employer within 120 days for you to be able to get benefits through Workers’ Compensation.  If you are looking to file a lawsuit against a responsible party, you usually have two years to do so.  However, a Workers’ Comp claim is often going to be the only route to compensation available for you as injured workers are barred from suing employers for injuries and must be able to prove another party was at fault to file a lawsuit.

Call Our Workers’ Compensation Lawyers for Help Filing Your Claim]

For a free case assessment on your injury claim, call (267) 651-7945 for a free case review with Cardamone Law’s Harrisburg, PA Workers’ Compensation lawyers.