One of the legal requirements or “elements” of a workers’ compensation case is “notice”. That is, Your employer has a right to be notified of your accident. New clients tell me all the time: “Well, I didn’t actually tell my supervisor about the accident, but he knows.” After a bit more inquiry, it turns out that the client really does not know for sure if the employer has really been notified.
The conservative approach to notice in workers’ compensation cases,, and by far the best practice, is for the employee to specifically tell his or her employer about the accident, including who was present, i.e., eyewitnesses, other witnesses, what happened, where it happened, when it happened, and if the employee knows, why it happened.