North Dakota: Failure to File Claim Within 29 Months of Injury Bars Recovery of Benefits

In North Dakota, as is also the case in most states, the claims filing period begins on the date of injury. Under N.D. Cent. Code § 65-05-01, however, if the employee suffers from a latent injury or condition, the filing period begins on the first date a reasonable lay person, not learned in medicine, knew or should have known that he suffered a compensable work-related injury and has either lost wages or received medical treatment. Accordingly, where a worker contended that he sustained injuries when he was locked in a small room without a functioning heater—the outside temperature was 30 degrees below zero—his failure to file a claim until 29 months later resulted in the barring of that claim. The court observed that he sought medical treatment shortly after the incident. His contention that he was not diagnosed with a concussion until much later was not persuasive, said the court, where his own testimony was that during his ordeal, he banged his fists and his headagainst the walls of the room as he cried for help.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Lechner v. North Dakota Workforce Safety & Ins, 2018 ND 270, 2018 N.D. LEXIS 270 (Dec. 6, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.05.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see