Late filing costs nursing assistant her workers’ compensation claim

Between January 2020 and November 2022, she filed eight separate notices of claim covering a range of injuries, including left hip osteoarthritis. She argued they amounted to an occupational disease. Under Connecticut law, claims for accidental or repetitive trauma injuries must be filed within one year. Occupational disease claims get three. 

An administrative law judge found her injuries resembled repetitive trauma rather than occupational disease, and dismissed the claims as time barred. The Compensation Review Board agreed, and so did the appeals court. 

To qualify as an occupational disease, the worker had to show her condition was distinctively tied to nursing assistant work – more likely to strike her than other manual laborers doing similar jobs. She testified that lifting and transferring patients who could weigh up to 200 pounds set her role apart, and described moving people on and off a Hoyer lift throughout her shift. 

The fact-finder was not persuaded. Her medical records described the injuries as work-related but did not show that her specific occupation made her more susceptible. A physician who reviewed the case for the defense concluded her injuries were degenerative and unrelated to the work she did. The review board noted that while her doctors linked her injury to her employment, none addressed whether her role made her more susceptible than other jobs. 

The classification drove the deadline. A condition that builds over time is not automatically an occupational disease; the worker had to prove the role itself carried a distinctive risk, and ordinary manual-labor strain did not clear that bar.