South Carolina: Formal Notice to Employer Excused Where Supervisor Witnessed Employee’s Injury

Acknowledging that S.C. Code § 42–15–20 requires that every injured employee or his representative give the employer “notice” of a job-related accident, but that no specific form of notice was actually required under the statute, the Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed the Commission’s Appellate Panel, finding that where a highway construction worker lost consciousness and fell to the ground in the presence of his supervisor, the worker’s failure to give his employer formal notice of his injury was excused. The Court added that under the circumstances, the employer could hardly claim it was prejudiced by the lack of formal notice. The supervisor and others even visited the injured worker in the hospital and were quite aware that he never returned to work.

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

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See Nero v. South Carolina Dept. of Transp., 2017 S.C. LEXIS 62 (Mar. 29, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.03.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see