New South Wales Consolidated Acts

WORKPLACE INJURY MANAGEMENT AND WORKERS COMPENSATION ACT 1998 - SECT 261

261 Time within which claim for compensation must be made

(1) Compensation cannot be recovered unless a claim for the compensation has been made within 6 months after the injury or accident happened or, in the case of death, within 6 months after the date of death.

(2) If a claim for compensation was made by an injured worker within the period required by this section, this section does not apply to a claim for compensation in respect of the death of the worker resulting from the injury to which the worker's claim related.

(3) For the purposes of this section, a person is considered to have made a claim for compensation when the person makes any claim for compensation in respect of the injury or death concerned, even if the person's claim did not relate to the particular compensation in question.

(4) The failure to make a claim within the period required by this section is not a bar to the recovery of compensation if it is found that the failure was occasioned by ignorance, mistake, absence from the State or other reasonable cause, and either--

(a) the claim is made within 3 years after the injury or accident happened or, in the case of death, within 3 years after the date of death, or

(b) the claim is not made within that 3 years but the claim is in respect of an injury resulting in the death or serious and permanent disablement of a worker.

(5) The failure to make a claim within the period required by this section is not a bar to the recovery of compensation if the insurer concerned determines to accept the claim outside that period. An insurer cannot determine to accept a claim made more than 3 years after the injury or accident happened or after the date of death (as appropriate) except with the approval of the Authority.

(6) If an injured worker first becomes aware that he or she has received an injury after the injury was received, the injury is for the purposes of this section taken to have been received when the worker first became so aware.

(7) If death results from an injury and a person who is entitled to claim compensation in respect of the death first becomes aware after the death that the death resulted or is likely to have resulted from the injury, the date of death is, for the purposes of the application of this section to a claim by that person, taken to be the date that the person became so aware.

(8) In a case where 2 or more persons are liable or partly liable in respect of compensation (whether or not that liability arises from the same or from different injuries), a claim is for the purposes of this section taken to have been made when a claim is made on any one of those persons.

(9) When particulars of any injury received by a worker are entered in a register of injuries kept by the employer under this Act, the making of that entry suffices for the purposes of this section as the making of a claim for compensation in respect of the injury.