Notice, Claim and Medical Examination

In one line

A claim must be preceded by notice and brought within two years, but bad notice or no notice is forgiven in several situations, and a claimant who misses the deadline for sufficient cause can still be heard.

In exam wording: section 82 of the Code on Social Security 2020 bars a claim for compensation unless notice of the accident was given as soon as practicable and the claim was preferred within two years of the accident or, in case of death, of the death, subject to provisos fixing the date of the accident in disease cases, to saving provisions where notice was defective or absent, and to a power to entertain a claim out of time for sufficient cause.

Why the law has this at all

Two interests pull against each other.

The employer needs to know quickly. He must investigate while witnesses remember, examine the injured man while the injury is fresh, and put his insurer on notice. A claim sprung on him three years later cannot be fairly met.

The worker is in no position to comply. He is injured, often illiterate, often unaware there is a scheme at all, and the person he must give notice to is the person who will have to pay.

Section 82 resolves this in a way worth stating as a principle: it sets a firm requirement and then forgives non-compliance wherever the reason for the requirement has already been met. If the employer knew about the accident anyway, notice adds nothing, so its absence is forgiven. If the worker died on the premises, nobody needed telling. And behind all of it sits a general power to condone for sufficient cause.

Some words this chapter uses

Entertain, of a claim, means to receive and deal with it, as distinct from allowing it. Prefer a claim means to make or lodge it. Bar is a rule preventing a claim from being heard at all, as distinct from one defeating it on the merits. Vicinity means the surrounding area. Bona fide means in good faith. Deposition is evidence given on oath and recorded in writing. Condone, of delay, means to excuse it so that the proceeding may go on.

Section 82(1): the two requirements

No claim for compensation shall be entertained by a competent authority unless:

1. notice of the accident has been given in the manner the section provides, as soon as practicable after the happening thereof; and
2. the claim is preferred within two years of the occurrence of the accident, or, in case of death, within two years from the date of death.

Note the two different starting points. For an injury it runs from the accident; for a death it runs from the death, which may be much later.