When you live in Georgia and suffer an injury on the job, you may have cause to file a workers’ compensation claim relating to your injury. Regardless of whether the injury you suffered was ultimately your fault or someone else’s, you should still be able to move forward with a workers’ compensation claim if the injury occurred while you were at work.
However, you must follow certain guidelines when filing a workers’ compensation claim in the state. One of the most important involves making sure you adhere to all established deadlines. There is, in fact, a statute of limitations in Georgia that dictates exactly how long you have to come forward with a workers’ compensation claim. If you blow that deadline, you will lose your chance at recourse.
Understanding Georgia’s statute of limitations
If you wish to move forward with your workers’ compensation claim, you will need to file a form known as a WC-14 with the State Board of Workers’ Compensation to initiate the process. Do not count on your employer or his or her insurance company handling this critical part of the process for you, because she or he will not file this form on your behalf. Instead, the responsibility falls on you or your legal team. You must file the form within a designated timeframe, meaning you must adhere to one of three important dates. In the first scenario, you must file your claim within one year of the date you suffered your work-related injury.
In the second scenario, you must file your workers’ compensation claim within a year from the day you began to miss work because of your work-related injury. In the third scenario, meanwhile, you would need to file your claim within one year of the date your employer last paid for your medical treatment.
Remember, the state strictly enforces these deadlines, so if you blow them, it is on you. In other words, if you wish to move forward with a workers’ compensation claim, make sure you do so within these parameters.