Iowa: Almost any Written Document Can Serve as Notice of Injury to Employer

Acknowledging that pursuant to Iowa Code § 85.23, an employee ordinarily must provide a written notice of injury to the employer, but also stressing that the notice need not take any particular form, an Iowa appellate court affirmed a trial court’s determination that appropriate notice was provided to the employer where the employee completed a “Near Miss Report” indicating that he had struck his head while working. The employer contended that the “Near Miss Report” was used in many different situations and that it was not ordinarily used to indicate a work-related injury. The employer contended the employee hit his head almost daily. The appellate court stressed, however, that while it was true that the employee often hit his head, he didn’t fill out the “Near Miss Report” in those other situations. That he did complete the form on this occasion should have provided the employer with sufficient notice that it should investigate further if it had questions.

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 John Deere Davenport Works v. Dickerson, 2021 Iowa App. LEXIS 275 (Apr. 14, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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