10 Oct 2021

West Virginia: Judge Should Have Appointed EMA to Resolve Conflict in Medical Opinions

While procedural rules are often relaxed in workers’ compensation cases, the six-month statute of limitations provided in W. Va. Code § 23-4-15(a) is jurisdictional, held West Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals in a memorandum decision. Where a teacher filed his workers’ compensation claim 11 months after his alleged work-related injury, his filing was untimely under the statute. He argued that extenuating circumstances existed that should excuse his untimely filing. There had been a teachers’ strike. He contended he feared that he might lose his job by filing a claim. The Court said the record clearly established his filing had not been timely. The Legislature had not provided any exceptions to the jurisdictional requirements for workers’ compensation claims.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and 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 Foltz v. Berkeley County Bd. of Educ., 2021 W. Va. LEXIS 511 (Oct. 4, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 124.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see