Recently, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ordered to be reported a prior memorandum opinion from August. Certainly, this was done with good reason, since the topic is not uncommon in older workers’ compensation cases. Specifically, Keffer v. Colfax and Phoenix Insurance, (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board), No. 1110 C.D. 2022, considers whether an employer should be held responsible for notifying an injured worker when the three-year statute of repose of Section 413(a) of the act would expire. Similarly, the court considered whether the employer should have been equitably estopped from raising the statute of repose issue as a defense to the claimant’s review and reinstatement petitions, in the first place.

The facts of the underlying case, which were not in dispute, began when the claimant suffered a work-related “low back strain” in December 2014. In January 2015, the claim was accepted via notice of temporary compensation payable (NTCP), which afforded the claimant indemnity benefits until March 2015 when he returned to full-duty work, at which time the employer stopped the temporary compensation and issued a medical-only NCP (MONCP).