Pennsylvania: Court OKs Reinstatement of Permanent Benefits for “Pre-Protz” Claimant

An injured Pennsylvania worker, whose disability status was modified from permanent to temporary in 2008, based upon a 2006 impairment rating evaluation (IRE), who then exhausted her 500 weeks of partial disability benefits and, within three years of the last payment of compensation, sought reinstatement of permanent disability, may take advantage of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's holding in Protz v. Workers' Comp. Appeal Bd. (Derry Area Sch. Dist.), 639 Pa. 645, 161 A.3d 827, 840-41 (Pa. 2017) (Protz II)], in spite of the fact that she did not raise the constitutional issue of Section 306(a.2) herself in her own proceeding, held the state’s Commonwealth Court. 

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 Whitfield v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (Tenet Health Sys. Hahnemann LLC), 2018 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 216 (June 6, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 131.03.

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