22 Jun, 2018

 A. Under Iowa law an injured worker can report an injury within 90 days of the event and still have a valid workers' compensation claim. It is no defense for the company to hide behind an arbitrary time limit of 24 hours. The law is you have 90 days to report the injury.

  Think about this example, if you are hurt on January 1st of a given year, you will at least have until March 30th of the same year in which to tell the company about your injury. Just take a calendar and count forward 90 days to find your last possible date on which to give notice of injury.

            The best practice is to tell the company as soon as possible that your injury has taken place. Don’t wait until the last possible moment to give notice about an obvious injury as this will just cause problems with suspicious employers. But, giving prompt notice is not always possible. What about a worker who strains a back on Friday afternoon but waits to report it until seeing how it does over the weekend? Or, if you pick up an infection from a wound at work and it takes weeks for the problem to fully develop no one can fault you for not immediately reporting the work connection. Many workers do not know that if they hurt themselves through repetitive motion jobs that their case is valid even if several weeks, or even months, go by until the doctor explains that work likely caused the symptoms.

These are but a few of the ways in which a valid claim can take time to fully develop. These problems can be very complex. A worker facing a 90 day notice problem should call an attorney immediately.