United States: Discharged Employee Fails to Show Employer Was Aware of His Intent to File Claim

Construing Pennsylvania law, a federal district court held that plaintiff, a former employee, had not established a prima facie case of retaliatory discharge when it was undisputed that he had sustained a work-related injury, but where he had given no indication that he was going to file a workers’ compensation claim prior to his termination on what the employer contended were unrelated grounds. The employer had contended that plaintiff did not engage in any protected activity because he did not file a workers’ compensation claim with the state Bureau or the employer. Plaintiff contended he had communicated his intention to file such a claim. The federal district court observed that federal courts in Pennsylvania had “grappled” with what conduct, short of actually filing a workers' compensation claim, may be sufficient to constitute protected activity. The court indicated it would follow the holding put forth in Smith v. R.R. Donnelley & Sons, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105347 (E.D. Pa., Sept. 16, 2011), that a plaintiff must (1) report the work-related injury and (2) express the "intent to file" a workers' compensation claim to the employer in order to trigger the protection of the public policy exception. The district court observed that despite the full benefit of discovery, plaintiff offered no support beyond his own deposition testimony to corroborate his claim that the employer was on notice of his intent to file a workers' compensation claim. Plaintiff’s self-serving deposition testimony, when juxtaposed against the rest of the record, was insufficient to meet his burden of pointing to some evidence in the record that created a genuine issue of material fact.

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).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Runion v. Equipment Transport, LLC, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14133 (M.D. Pa., Sept. 1, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

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