Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Attorney Blog

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently handed down another decision addressing the ability of injured workers to correct the description of the work injury in a Notice of Compensation Payable ("NCP"). The NCP is the form completed by the employer and filed with Bureau of Workers' Compensation that officially recognizes and describes the work injury. Employers and insurance carriers are notorious for essentially underreporting the severity of the injury to limit future liability. For example, an injury to the neck and shoulder may only be described as "right shoulder strain" in effort to avoid liability for a potentially more serious cervical disc injury. In other cases, if the injured worker subsequently develops a "consequential" injury as a result of the work injury. For example, a worker with an injured knee may later develop a serious infection following surgery that requires additional treatmnt or a permanently disabled worker with a back injury may become clincially depressed due to the work injury.

In Fitzgibbons v. WCAB (City of Philadelphia), an en banc panel of the Commonwealth Court held that injured workers who want to correct the description of the injury in the NCP have three years after the date of the most recent payment of compensation to file a review petition seeking to add new "consequential' injuries or to correct the description of the injury provided by the employer. The Fitzgibbons case puts the burden squarely on the injured worker to take action to correct the NCP to correct the injury description or to have a new consequential condition added to the NCP or risk having a later claim for certain conditions excluded. While employers have always tried to minimize the injury in the NCP, the Fitzgibbons case puts teeth in the employer's limited injury description if the injured worker fails to take the necessary action to correct the injury description in a timely manner. Fitzgibbons underscores the need for injured workers to seek legal advice from a an experienced workers' compensation attorney at the earliest opportunity.