Reporting a Work Injury in Maryland

Today I am going to cover the requirement in Maryland for reporting a work injury. The extended period of time that many have been out of work in the last few weeks and months has raised questions for many injured workers about how and when they can report on the job injuries. These may have occurred either right before a shutdown or simply be conditions that didn’t show up until weeks later.

If you remember nothing else, or don’t read any further, remember this: When you report a work injury to your employer make sure you talk with a supervisor or manager and tell them what is injured, when you got hurt, where you got hurt and how you got hurt. Doing that will help protect your rights in the future.

Maryland law requires that you provide notice of an injury to your employer within 10 days of the date of the accidental injury. IF the accident results in death or the condition is the result of an occupational disease, the reporting requirements are different. Maryland law requires that this initial notice be in writing and include specific information, including when where and how the accident happened and what was injured It also requires that it be signed.   

This requirement is not absolute. If written notice has not been provided in 10 days, the claim can still be accepted if the Workers’ Compensation Commission finds that there was a sufficient reason for doing so, or if there was no prejudice to either the employer or the insurance company because of the delay. In practice this means two things.

First, if you report the injury longer than 10 days after it happened, there is a good chance that the case will go to a hearing rather than just be accepted by the insurance company. Second, if you have reported the injury even verbally and everyone agrees this happened, you still have a chance to get your claim accepted.

There are problems with verbally reporting the injury to your employer though. The first is that there is no record of when the conversation took place. All too often managers, supervisors, and HR directors will come to court and testify that an injured worker never told them anything or that the injured worker only told them they had a medical problem, not that it happened on the job. This leads to the second problem. Often when a work injury is reported verbally, an injured employee with tell a supervisor that they are hurt. There is no specific mention of where, how, or when it happened. To the injured worker it seems obvious. I just hurt my shoulder and now I am telling you that my shoulder hurts. But insurance companies are masters at using the lack of detail against injured workers. They will argue that the supervisor had no way of knowing that it was a work injury, or how it happened or when it happened, so they just assumed it must have happened at home.

This is why it is important that whenever you report a work injury you include 4 things: What you hurt, when you hurt it, where it happened, and how you hurt it. If it can be done in writing with a copy made, even better. If you can email or text your boss, that also will create the written record that will protect you later.

Remember, that even if you had an injury that occurred days, or even weeks ago, it is not too late to report the injury at work. If you contact a supervisor or manager and report the same information: What is hurt, where and when it happened, and how it happened; contact a lawyer to make sure your rights are protected..

If you have any questions about a work injury, either new or older, please contact the Law Office of Michael Kitzman for a free consultation.