Statute of Limitations

There are certain exceptions to the 120-day notice requirement, such as if you suffer from a progressive occupational disease. If you have hearing loss due to long-term exposure to hazardous noise, you must file your claim within three years from the date you were last exposed to hazardous noise. If you contracted an occupational disease due to workplace conditions, you must show that your resulting damages occurred within 300 weeks (approximately six years) of your last exposure to the hazardous or toxic workplace condition.

There are also exceptions to the three-year statute of limitations to file a Claim Petition. If your employer compensated your or gave you any similar payments in lieu of compensation, you have three years from the date of the last payment (instead of three years from the date of your injury) to file your Claim Petition. The statute of limitations may also be suspended if your employer paid your medical expenses related to your work injury. However, your employer must have made the payments with the intention to satisfy their legal workers’ compensation obligations.

An exception may also apply if you did not know the nature of your injury or that your job was the root cause of the injury. In that case, the statute of limitations would only begin to run when you knew or should have known of both the injury’s existence and its possible link to your work or workplace.

Finally, there may be an exception if your employer or their workers’ compensation carrier deceived you into thinking that your claim was accepted when it was not, thereby allowing the time limit to run out.