How Long Do I Have to File an LHWCA Claim?

Short answer, with its qualifications: Under the LHWCA, written notice of an injury is generally due within 30 days, and a compensation claim is generally due within one year. Neither period necessarily starts on the accident date. The statute ties the start to when you knew, or with reasonable diligence or medical advice should have known, that the injury was related to your work, and courts — including the Fifth Circuit, which hears Louisiana longshore appeals — have also considered when the worker understood that the injury would affect the ability to work and earn. Occupational disease that does not immediately result in disability or death has longer periods, occupational hearing loss has its own start date, compensation paid without an award can extend the filing period, and the statute contains specific exceptions for late notice and late claims. An apparent missed deadline is a reason for prompt review, not a conclusion.

The table below is a reference, not a calculation. The details behind each row are explained in the sections that follow.

Two points matter more than any number in that table. First, telling your employer about the injury and filing a claim for compensation are two different legal acts, and doing one does not accomplish the other. Second, if you believe you are already late, the correct response is to have someone review your dates and paperwork quickly. The statute contains too many awareness rules, payment rules, and exceptions to assume the worst from a calendar alone.

For broader questions about LHWCA claims and representation, see the firm's page on help with an LHWCA claim. This page is about timing.

Reporting your injury is not the same as filing your LHWCA claim

Many longshore and harbor workers believe their claim is "in" because a supervisor took a report, the company's insurance carrier sent a letter with a claim number, or a clinic started treating them under the employer's account. Those things may show that the employer knew about the injury — which can matter, as discussed below — but they do not by themselves show that you filed a claim for compensation with OWCP.

The LHWCA involves three different documents that are easy to confuse:

The statute itself explains why the distinction exists. Section 912 requires that notice be given both to the employer and to the OWCP district director, in writing, signed, with the time, place, nature, and cause of the injury. Section 913 separately requires that a claim be filed with OWCP. An employer's LS-202 satisfies the employer's duty. It does not satisfy yours.

That does not mean only one form can ever count as a claim. OWCP and the courts have not treated the LS-203 as the sole acceptable format, and a written document that identifies the worker and asserts a right to compensation may be evaluated on its substance. But you should not rely on that flexibility when a clear filing is available. The practical goal is simple: know exactly what you submitted, when, to whom, and whether it was received. A carrier claim number, a company incident report, and treatment authorized by the employer are all pieces of the picture. None of them should be assumed to be the piece that satisfies your own filing obligation.

Because OWCP's submission channels and instructions change, confirm the current filing method with the Department of Labor's Division of Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation before sending anything, and keep proof of what was sent and received. This page does not list a mailing address for that reason.

When does the LHWCA deadline clock start?

The injury date is the natural place to start counting, and for a sudden accident with an obvious cause it often is the controlling date. But the statute does not say the clock always starts on the day you were hurt.

Section 913(a) states that the time for filing a claim "shall not begin to run until the employee or beneficiary is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury or death and the employment." Section 912(a) contains parallel language for notice, adding that awareness may come "by reason of medical advice."

In plain terms, the statute recognizes two kinds of awareness:

• Actual awareness — you knew the injury was connected to your work.
• Constructive awareness — a reasonably diligent person in your position, or someone who had been given the medical advice you received, would have understood the connection.

The clock does not wait for a formal diagnosis if the connection was already reasonably apparent. It also does not necessarily start on the accident date if the relationship between the work and the harm was not yet known or knowable. Beyond the statutory text, courts including the Fifth Circuit have considered when the worker knew or should have known that the injury would impair the ability to work and earn, rather than treating any awareness of a work connection as the automatic start. Those interpretations are fact-specific, and a lawyer reviewing your case should identify which decisions control rather than rely on a general summary.

Because the trigger is awareness rather than a single event, the controlling date frequently has to be reconstructed from medical records, work restrictions, incident reports, and your own communications with the employer or carrier. The checklist at the end of this page lists what to gather.

Consider a simplified, hypothetical illustration. A shipyard worker develops back pain that he attributes to age. Months later, after an MRI, a physician tells him the condition is consistent with the repetitive lifting he performs at work. Which date matters for notice and filing — the onset of pain, the MRI, the physician's explanation, or the date he first missed work? The statute's awareness language does not answer that from a calendar alone; it depends on what he knew and what a reasonably diligent person receiving that medical advice should have known. That is why an "automatic" deadline calculator is not appropriate for these claims.

Death claims follow the same statutory structure — 30 days for notice and one year for the claim, measured from death or from the beneficiary's awareness of the relationship between the death and the employment — but they raise separate questions about who may claim and what benefits are available. Those questions belong with the firm's guidance on maritime wrongful death claims.

Occupational disease and hearing loss can follow different timing rules

The 30-day and one-year periods are the general rule. The statute sets out longer periods for a specific category: an occupational disease that does not immediately result in disability or death. That qualification is part of the rule, not a footnote to it.

For a qualifying occupational disease:

• Notice is due within one year after the worker becomes aware, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence or by reason of medical advice should have been aware, of the relationship between the employment, the disease, and the disability or death (§ 912(a)).
• A claim is timely if filed within two years after that same awareness, or within one year after the last payment of compensation, whichever is later (§ 913(b)(2)).

Notice that the trigger has three parts: awareness of the employment, the disease, and the resulting disability or death. Awareness of a diagnosis alone, without awareness that it is disabling and work-related, is not automatically the start of the period. The precise meaning of a qualifying disease, of awareness, and of "immediately" has been the subject of judicial interpretation, and the correct authority should be identified for your circumstances.

Two cautions follow from the statutory text:

1. Not every gradual or repetitive condition is a qualifying occupational disease. A cumulative-trauma injury with an identifiable disabling event may be treated as an injury subject to the general periods. Do not assume the two-year rule applies because a condition developed over time.
2. A qualifying disease that does immediately cause disability may fall outside the longer periods.

Occupational hearing loss has its own trigger in § 908(c)(13)(D). Under that provision, the time for giving notice under § 912 and for filing a claim under § 913 does not begin to run on a hearing-loss claim until the worker has received an audiogram, with the accompanying report, indicating that the worker has suffered a loss of hearing. The trigger is the receipt of both the test and the report — not the date of exposure, not the date of the test alone, and not the date of the last noisy shift.

What the hearing-loss provision changes is the start date, not the length of the periods. Occupational hearing loss generally uses the ordinary 30-day notice and one-year claim periods, measured from receipt of the audiogram and accompanying report. It is not treated as an occupational disease that does not immediately result in disability, so the one-year and two-year occupational-disease periods generally do not apply to it. The reason lies in the nature of the injury. In Bath Iron Works Corp. v. Director, OWCP, 506 U.S. 153 (1993), the Supreme Court explained that noise-induced hearing loss is complete when the exposure ends — the worker is disabled at that point, whether or not the loss has yet been measured — rather than a latent disease whose disability arrives years later. That immediate-disability character is what separates hearing loss from the qualifying latent occupational diseases that the longer periods were written for.

That does not leave a hearing-loss claimant with nothing but a short window. The audiogram-and-report receipt rule can place the start date long after the last exposure, and the other protections discussed on this page — employer knowledge, lack of prejudice, voluntary payments, § 930(f), and the first-hearing objection requirement — apply to hearing-loss claims as they do to other injury claims. If you have had hearing tests through the employer, a union program, or your own physician, keep every audiogram and every report that came with it, and note when you actually received each one.

Receiving compensation checks or medical treatment does not answer every filing question

Workers who are receiving weekly checks or whose medical bills are being paid often assume the claim is settled and no further filing is needed. The statute does address payments, but not in a way that eliminates the need to understand your filing status.

Section 913(a) provides that if compensation has been paid without an award, a claim may be filed within one year after the date of the last payment. For a qualifying occupational disease, § 913(b)(2) makes the claim timely within two years of awareness or one year after the last payment, whichever is later. These provisions can extend the time to file — but they turn on what was paid, when, and under what authority.

Not every payment is the same:

• Voluntary compensation payments for disability, paid by the employer or carrier without a compensation order, are the kind of payment § 913(a) addresses.
• Payments under an award or order stand differently; once there is an order, questions about additional benefits generally shift from initial filing to modification procedures, which are governed by their own rules.
• Medical bills paid by the employer or carrier should not be assumed to count as "compensation" for purposes of the one-year-after-last-payment rule. The statute treats medical services under § 907 and disability compensation under § 908 as distinct, and which payments extend the filing period should be confirmed by counsel rather than assumed.
• Ordinary wages for time actually worked, or continued salary, present their own characterization questions.

The reason this matters is practical. A worker who received disability checks for eight months and then had them stopped may still be within the period measured from the last payment. A worker whose only "benefit" was paid medical treatment may not be able to rely on that rule at all, even though the employer's conduct looked cooperative.

Are medical benefits barred by the same time limit? Generally, no. The § 913 filing period applies to claims for compensation. Medical benefits are governed by § 907, and the Benefits Review Board and courts have generally held that a request for medical treatment under § 907 is not barred by the § 913 filing period that applies to disability compensation. That does not mean medical care is guaranteed regardless of what you do: § 907 imposes its own requirements on authorization, choice of physician, and reimbursement, and an unauthorized or undocumented expense can be denied on those grounds even when timing is not the problem. Whether a particular medical request is timely and properly authorized should be confirmed for your facts. This page does not address entitlement to particular medical or disability benefits; that discussion belongs on the page covering LHWCA medical and disability benefits.

Do not wait for the checks to stop before finding out whether a claim has been filed. The last-payment rule is a backstop, not a strategy.

If 30 days or one year has passed, have I necessarily lost my claim?

No — not necessarily. Lateness can defeat a claim, and this section is not a reason to delay. But the statute contains specific provisions under which a late notice or a late claim does not bar compensation, and those provisions have to be examined before anyone concludes that rights are gone. It also matters which deadline you are worried about, because the notice exceptions and the claim-filing exceptions are separate.

Late notice under § 912(d)

Section 912(d) lists separate grounds on which failure to give timely notice does not bar a claim:

• Employer or carrier knowledge. The employer (or the agent in charge of the business where the injury occurred) or the carrier had knowledge of the injury or death. Knowledge is often shown through incident reports, supervisor statements, or company-authorized medical treatment — which is why the paperwork discussed earlier still matters even though it is not a claim.
• No prejudice. The district director determines that the employer or carrier was not prejudiced by the failure to give notice.
• Excused failure. The district director excuses the failure because notice, although not given to the responsible official the employer designated under § 912(c), was given to an official of the employer or the carrier and the employer or carrier was not prejudiced, or because "for some satisfactory reason such notice could not be given."
• Objection. A notice defect does not bar the claim unless objection to it is raised before the district director at the first hearing on the claim.

The statute lists knowledge and lack of prejudice as separately numbered grounds. How those grounds interact, and what counts as knowledge or prejudice, has been addressed by the Benefits Review Board and the courts, and the controlling reading should be identified for your facts rather than assumed in either direction. What matters at the outset is that a late notice is not automatically fatal.

Late claims under § 913 and § 930(f)

The claim-filing period in § 913(a) has its own set of provisions that can change the analysis:

• Awareness. As discussed above, the period does not begin until the worker was, or reasonably should have been, aware of the relationship between the injury and the employment. A claim that looks late measured from the accident date may be timely measured from the correct awareness date.
• Voluntary payments. If compensation was paid without an award, the period runs from the last payment.
• Employer's failure to report (§ 930(f)). Where the employer or carrier has been given notice or has knowledge of an injury and fails to file the report required by § 930(a), the § 913(a) limitations period does not begin to run until that report is furnished. This provision is conditional. It requires employer knowledge or notice, and it requires an actual failure to file the required report. It does not mean that any employer paperwork error rescues any late claim, and its scope has been addressed by the Fifth Circuit and other courts in ways that should be checked against your facts.
• Objection. Under § 913(b)(1), failure to file within the period does not bar the claim unless objection is made at the first hearing.
• Minority and mental incompetence. Section 913(c) provides that the period does not run against a person who is a minor or mentally incompetent and has no guardian or other authorized representative, subject to the statute's terms.
• Prior litigation. Section 913(d) addresses the situation where a worker sued at law or in admiralty and recovery was denied because the worker was an employee whose remedy was under the LHWCA; in that situation the limitations period does not begin until the denial. This is a narrow provision and depends on the precise procedural history.

Two honest statements should sit side by side. A worker who has missed a deadline is at genuine risk, and further delay may jeopardize remedies that are still available. At the same time, the statute is written with enough exceptions that "I'm past 30 days" or "it's been more than a year" is the beginning of an inquiry, not the end of one. The right next step is to have someone assemble your dates, your paperwork, and your payment history and match them against these provisions.

Does an LHWCA filing protect a vessel lawsuit, state claim, or appeal?

Filing a compensation claim with OWCP is the step that satisfies the § 913 filing requirement for the LHWCA claim itself. It does not establish coverage or entitlement, and it does not preserve any other remedy that might arise from the same injury.

Vessel-negligence and other third-party claims. Section 905(b) permits a covered worker to sue a vessel for negligence, and injuries in ports and shipyards frequently involve other contractors, equipment manufacturers, or property owners. Those are lawsuits, not administrative claims, and they carry their own limitations rules. Filing an LS-203 with OWCP does not stop the clock on any of them. Those claims are covered on the firm's pages on separate vessel-negligence claims and third-party claims alongside LHWCA benefits.

Coverage. This page assumes the LHWCA applies. Whether it actually does depends on the nature of your work and where it was performed — the status and situs requirements — not on a job title or on working in a Gulf Coast port. If coverage is uncertain, the deadline analysis changes, because a different statute may govern. Coverage is addressed on the page about workers covered by the LHWCA.

Jones Act. Seamen — members of a vessel's crew — are generally outside the LHWCA and have a different remedy with a different limitations period. If you are a crew member researching deadlines, the relevant discussion is the firm's page on Jones Act filing deadlines. Do not apply the LHWCA's 30-day and one-year periods to a Jones Act claim, or the reverse.

State workers' compensation. The LHWCA periods discussed here are federal. Louisiana does not impose a separate LHWCA filing deadline, and the state's own workers' compensation deadlines apply to state claims, not federal longshore claims. Whether a state claim is available alongside or instead of an LHWCA claim is a separate question.

Appeals and modification. Once a claim is decided, a request for modification of an award and an appeal from a decision each have their own procedural time limits, distinct from the initial filing periods on this page. If you already have a compensation order or a denial, the relevant deadline is not the one-year initial filing period, and you should ask specifically about the time to appeal or to seek modification.

Gather these dates and documents for an LHWCA deadline review

You do not need a complete file to ask for help, and you should not delay asking while you search for records. Approximate dates are enough to begin. But the following categories are what a meaningful deadline review actually turns on, and each corresponds to a statutory provision discussed above.

Timeline of the injury or exposure (§§ 912, 913)

• Date of the accident, or the period of exposure for a gradual condition.
• Date you first had symptoms.
• Date of diagnosis.
• Date a physician or anyone else first told you the condition was work-related.
• Date you first missed work, were given restrictions, or were placed on light duty.
• Where you are uncertain, say so; an honest range is more useful than a guess presented as fact.

Hearing-loss testing (§ 908(c)(13)(D))

• Every audiogram and the written report that came with it, including older tests — the sequence can matter.
• The date you actually received each report and how it was delivered.

Notice and filing (§§ 912, 913)

• Whom you told about the injury, when, and how (verbally, in writing, through a company form).
• Any LS-201 notice, with proof of submission and receipt.
• Any LS-203 claim, with proof of submission and receipt.
• Any LS-202 employer report you have seen or been given.
• Copies of company incident reports you signed.
• Letters and emails from the employer or its insurance carrier, including claim numbers.
• All correspondence from OWCP.

Payments (§§ 907, 913(a), 913(b)(2))

• Payment ledger or benefit history, or the individual check stubs and explanations of benefits.
• Whether each payment was disability compensation, medical, or wages.
• The date of the last compensation payment and any notice that payments were stopping.
• Any compensation order, award, or approved settlement.

Employer reporting (§ 930)

• Evidence that the employer knew about the injury: incident reports, supervisor emails, medical treatment authorized by the company.
• Whether you know if the employer ever filed its report with OWCP.

Why each category matters: the timeline establishes the awareness date; the hearing-loss records establish the § 908(c)(13)(D) trigger; the notice and filing records show which obligations were actually satisfied and when; the payment records determine whether the last-payment rule applies; and the employer-reporting evidence bears on both the § 912(d) knowledge ground and the § 930(f) provision.

Keep originals. Make copies. Do not send medical records, Social Security numbers, or claim documents through public channels such as social media or unsecured comment forms. And do not put off seeking help because the file is incomplete — the review can begin with what you have.

Legal authorities behind these LHWCA deadline rules

This page summarizes federal statutory provisions and identifies where judicial interpretation and agency practice fill in the details. It is general information about how the LHWCA's timing rules work, not a determination of any reader's deadline.

Statutory authority (current text available through the United States Code, Title 33, Chapter 18):

• 33 U.S.C. § 912(a)–(d) — Notice periods and awareness trigger; form and manner of notice; grounds on which late notice does not bar a claim, including employer or carrier knowledge, lack of prejudice, excused failure, and the first-hearing objection requirement. (§ 912)
• 33 U.S.C. § 913(a)–(d) — One-year filing period and awareness trigger; one year after last payment where compensation was paid without an award; first-hearing objection requirement; two-year period for occupational disease that does not immediately result in disability or death, or one year from last payment, whichever is later; minority and mental incompetence; prior litigation. (§ 913)
• 33 U.S.C. § 930(a) and (f) — Employer's reporting obligation; effect of failure to report on the § 913(a) period where the employer had notice or knowledge. (§ 930)
• 33 U.S.C. § 908(c)(13)(D) — Notice and filing periods for occupational hearing loss begin on receipt of an audiogram with accompanying report. (§ 908)
• 33 U.S.C. § 907 and § 905(b) — Referenced only to distinguish medical benefits from disability compensation, and vessel-negligence litigation from administrative filing.

Judicial interpretation. Decisions of the Benefits Review Board, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (which hears appeals from Louisiana and Texas longshore cases), and the United States Supreme Court — including Bath Iron Works Corp. v. Director, OWCP, 506 U.S. 153 (1993), on the treatment of occupational hearing loss as an injury that is disabling when exposure ends rather than a latent occupational disease — have interpreted the awareness standard, the meaning of "compensation" for the last-payment rule, the § 912(d) grounds, the scope of § 930(f), and the treatment of medical-benefit claims under § 907. This page describes those principles in general terms; the specific decisions that control a given case depend on its facts.

Agency guidance. The Department of Labor's Division of Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation publishes worker-facing FAQs, the current Forms LS-201, LS-202, and LS-203, and submission instructions. Agency guidance is practical and useful but does not override the statutory text. Forms and submission channels change; confirm current instructions with the Division before filing.

Ask The Young Firm to review your LHWCA filing timeline

The Young Firm handles maritime injury matters for workers in New Orleans, across Louisiana, and along the Gulf Coast, including longshore, port, dock, and shipyard workers whose claims fall under the LHWCA. If you are not certain whether your notice was given, whether your claim was actually filed, when your clock started, or whether a deadline has already passed, contact the firm and ask for a review of your timeline.

You may begin with approximate dates and whatever documents you already have. You do not need to have located every record first, and you should not wait until you have. Workers who believe they are already too late are welcome to ask: the statute's awareness rules, payment rules, and exceptions mean that apparent lateness requires analysis, not assumption. No one can promise that a late claim will be saved — and no one should — but the question deserves an answer based on your actual facts.

Three things to understand before you reach out:

• Contacting the firm does not file a claim. Submitting an inquiry, sending documents, or speaking with the firm does not give notice under § 912, does not file a claim under § 913, and does not stop any clock. A claim is filed only when it is actually submitted to OWCP through the current required channel.
• Contacting the firm does not by itself create representation. Representation begins only when the firm and the worker agree to it.
• A lawyer is not legally required to file an LHWCA claim. Workers may file on their own. The value of a review is in getting the dates, the form, the filing destination, and the exceptions right when the consequences of getting them wrong are significant.

For the firm's broader LHWCA practice and how it approaches these claims, see help with an LHWCA claim.