Pennsylvania: Failure to Award Attorney's Fees Was Erroneous Where Employer Failed to File Notice of Compensation Payable in Timely Manner

Observing that the issue of whether an employer had reasonably contested a claim was a question of law fully reviewable by the appellate court, a Pennsylvania appellate court reversed a decision of the Appeals Board that rule an employer's contest was reasonable. Stressing that the employer had paid the injured employee's medical bills and had provided on-site medical services after the injury, but did not file its medical-only notice of compensation payable in a timely manner, the court said that had the employer acted in a timely fashion, the parties would not have been forced to litigate the case. Attorney's fees should, therefore, have been awarded by the workers' compensation judge and failure to do so was error.

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 Gabriel v. Workers' Comp. Appeal Bd. (P&G Prods. Co.), 2020 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 693 (Sept. 11, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 133.02.

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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