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Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board11/17/2003
rder were conditions not identified on the NCP; her new physical problems the were separate and distinct from the original low back injury on the NCP; and claimant did not prove that her new physical problems were a natural consequence of the original injury. Claimant never sought to amend the description of her injury on the NCP until the employer filed a suspension/termination petition four years after the original injury. Accordingly, we held that Section 315, which establishes a statute of repose, barred an amendment to the claimant's NCP.
Jeanes Hospital followed this Court's earlier holding in AT&T;v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Hernandez), 707 A.2d 649 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1998). In that case, we noted that the claimant should have filed a claim petition because he did "not contend that his aseptic necrosis of the hips occurred as a natural consequence of the back sprain or was, in fact, related to the back sprain in any way." Hernandez, 707 A.2d at 650 n.2. The form of the petition was not determinative because the employer failed to prove that claimant had fully recovered; accordingly, the WCJ's determination that claimant remained disabled was affirmed.
misplaced. They are factually distinguishable, and they do not stand for the broad proposition, as suggested by Employer, that an NCP must be modified within three years of the occurrence of an injury . In Jeanes Hospital, the employer was presented with a separate and distinct physical injury after claimant's right to assert a new injury had been extinguished by the statute of repose. In Hernandez, the claimant did not assert that the new injuries were the natural consequence of the original. Here, by contrast, Claimant acknowledged that he had the burden of relating his psychological difficulties to his work-related injury and specifically sought to amend the NCP.
Further, so long as there is a causal relationship between a psychological and physical injury , a claimant is not bound by the statute of repose in Section 315 of the Act. In Commercial Credit Claims v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (Lancaster), 556 Pa. 325, 728 A.2d 902 (1999), our Supreme Court held that the claimant, not the employer, bears the burden of establishing a causal relationship between a work-related injury and a subsequent psychiatric injury where the NCP relates only to physical injuries. At issue there was employer's termination petition; the claimant had not petitioned to modify the terms of the original NCP in accordance with the Act. The Supreme Court refused to allow the claimant to shift the burden of proof on whether his psychiatric injury was related to the work-related injury merely by contesting the employer's termination petition. However, the Supreme Court noted that the Claimant was not without recourse even though sixteen years had elapsed since the original injury:
Claimant may still file a Petition for Review seeking to amend the original Notice of Compensation Payable by meeting his burden of proving that he suffered a work-related mental disability as a result of the work-related physical injury for which employer accepted liability.
Commercial Credit Claims, 556 Pa. at 332, 728 A.2d at 906.
In sum, Employer's effort to shoehorn Claimant's petition into a Section 315 petition must be rejected. Section 413(a) of the Act applies to those situations where the parties have previously agreed upon the compensation payable, but a dispute arises as to the nature of the injury accepted or the continued disability of the claimant. At the time he filed his review petition, Claimant was receiving medical and wage loss benefits pursuant to an agreement with Employer. Accordingly, Section 41
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