Montana: Security Guard’s Quick Notes Regarding Assault by Unruly Patient Was Insufficient Notice to Employer of Claim

The Supreme Court of Montana held that a hospital security guard failed to provide sufficient notice of injury to his employer when he made sketchy notations in a daily log book that he had been hit in the nose by an unruly psychiatric patient that he and others were attempting to restrain. The Court also observed that while Mont. Code Ann. § 39-71-601 provided for a tolling of the statute of limitations for up to three years where the claimant did not have reason to connect his or her condition with the workplace, here the claimant had waited almost four years after the incident to file his claim. Accordingly, it was barred as untimely.

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 Richardson v. Indemnity Ins. Co. of N. Am., 2019 MT 160, 2019 Mont. LEXIS 260 (July 16, 2019)

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