North Carolina: Two-Year Statute of Limitations is Clear and Unequivocal

A statute of limitations that bars additional compensation for an injured employee if two years passes after the last payment of medical or indemnity benefits [see N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97025.1] is clear and unambiguous, held a North Carolina appellate court. Accordingly, where a medical provider began billing Medicare, instead of the workers' compensation carrier, for treatment associated with a work-related injury, the worker could not require the carrier to pay for a new pain management treatment regime some four years after the last payment of benefits by the carrier. The court was not convinced by the worker's argument that the carrier was required, under the provisions of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-18(h), to provide the worker and the Commission with notice that it had made its final payment. The court said there would have been no way for the carrier to have known it would subsequently be billed for medical care.

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 Dunbar v. Acme Southern, 2020 N.C. App. LEXIS 781 (Nov. 17, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.07.

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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