A sole proprietor contractor serving as both employee and employer who was injured on the job wasn’t entitled to workers compensation because he failed to timely notify his insurer of the workplace injury, a Pennsylvania appellate court ruled Wednesday.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court reversed a Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board decision affirming a comp judge’s granting benefits to David Heater.
Mr. Heater claimed he sustained a fractured neck vertebrae when he tripped while coming off a ladder during a roofing repair project. Mr. Heater’s business was subcontractor on the job.
The insurer denied the injury claim, challenging both the cause of the injury and the untimeliness of the claim filing.
The workers comp judge agreed with the insurer that the claim was untimely, but the board reversed, ruling that because Mr. Heater was his own employer, “notice of the work injury was instantaneous.”
In reversing, the Commonwealth Court distinguished between employer and insurer, saying that while notice given to an employer by a sole proprietor is instantaneous, the injured party still must give timely notice of a claim to the workers comp insurer, which the appeals court found was not done in this case.
The court said that a sole proprietor notifying only himself of the claim and not the insurer deprives the insurer from fully investigating the case and enables sole proprietor claimants to delay notice to insurers until “sometimes years after the injury.”