In Bridge v. Karr Tuckpointing, issued March 11, 2009, the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner, and held that the employee gave his employer timely notice, even though he did not submit the notice within the 90 days required under the State statute. So far, the opinion is not published. In fact, Robert Bridge notified his employer of the work injury over two years after he sustained the injury, and two weeks after the Petition for Arbitration was filed, asking for a hearing before the Iowa workers’ compensation agency.

Iowa workers’ compensation law requires that an employee notify the employer within 90 days of the work injury, or the injured worker cannot proceed with a claim before the Iowa workers’ compensation agency. In this case, Karr Tuckpointing sought to have the claim dismissed before the State agency. The Commissioner agreed, and that claim was dismissed. The Commissioner ordered benefits paid for later work injuries at Karr Tuckpointing. Click here to see the Commissioner's decision.

However, the Iowa Court of Appeals decided that he did not have a opinion that the condition was serious until almost two years after the actual injury, so he did not have to notify the employer until then. The Court noted, “This report marks the first time that Bridge received a medical diagnosis indicating that his condition was permanent and would require surgery. . . [The treating physician’s] written report is the first documentation linking the aggravation of Bridge’s degenerative arthritis to his employment. Until this report, there was no indication that Bridge was alerted to the seriousness, and therefore probable compensable nature of his injury which had aggravated his degenerative arthritis.” The injury was in mid-May of 2002; the doctor’s report was in late May of 2004.

In this case, the written report was more than two years after the injury, and was about two weeks after the Petition for Arbitration was filed.

However, this was a cumulative injury, not a traumatic injury, which could be expected to result in a more lenient standard for notice; in this case, Mr. Bridge worked until May of 2004, around the time that the Petition was filed. The Court cited 1B A. Larson, Workmen’s Compensation § 39.10 (1985)) [see now Larson's Workers' Compensation Law § 50.01] as to the nature of cumulative injuries.