What If Employer’s Hidden Identity Causes Workers’ Comp Claim to Be Filed Late?

A late-filed workers’ compensation claim can be considered valid where the lateness is due to the identity of the claimant’s employer being concealed from her.

The Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission (VWCC) has upheld a deputy commissioner’s ruling that found an employee should not be denied benefits for filing her injury claim against the correct entity after the state’s two-year statute of limitations had expired. The claimant had no way of knowing that her employer was by law the federal grant-making agency AmeriCorps and not the school program where she was an assistant or the city that paid her.

The 78-year old claimant participated in the Foster Grandparents Program, assisting students and teachers in the Hampton, Virginia school system. On May 1, 2023, she suffered a fall and sustained injuries. She filed three times for her workers’ compensation benefits; two claims were filed within the two-year limitation period. On the first, she named Peninsula Foster Grandparents as her employer; on the second, she listed Hampton Public Schools. Then, 27 months after her injury on August 18, 2025, her counsel moved to add AmeriCorps as the employer, a motion granted then appealed by AmeriCorps to the full commission.

There was no dispute that AmeriCorps is the employer. AmeriCorps is a federal program that provides grants to state and local governments to help them meet community needs. The Virginia workers’ compensation act provides that an “employee” includes “AmeriCorps members who receive stipends in return for volunteering in local, state and nonprofit agencies in the Commonwealth.”

However, the claimant initially filed her claim against the employer as it was identified to her at the time she applied. She was never informed about the existence of AmeriCorps during any of her years of service, and even her supervisor and the school human resource department were unaware of the fact that AmeriCorps was the employer for the foster program. She was not supervised by AmeriCorps. All payments she received, whether stipends or reimbursements, were from the city of Hampton. The 1099 IRS form she received was from the city as well.

The commission explained that in order to prove estoppel and avoid the statutory time limit, the claimant needed to establish either fraud or concealment by the employer, or an act reasonably calculated to induce the employee to refrain from preserving her claim. The commission also noted that the doctrine of imposition empowers the commission, in appropriate cases, to render decisions based on justice shown by the total circumstances, even though no fraud, mistake, or concealment has been shown. Imposition requires a threshold showing of unfairness. At the same time, employers are also barred from relying upon the expiration of the statute of limitations.

The deputy commissioner ruled that given that AmeriCorps must be presumed aware of the definition of an employee in the law, that it took no steps to inform workers within its purview of the employment relationship created by statute, and that the claimant correctly identified the employment unit for which AmeriCorps offered funding for stipends, the principles of estoppel prevent AmeriCorps from asserting that the provisions of Virginia law bar the woman’s claim.

The deputy wrote: “An employee, such as the claimant, who was provided no information that her employer should be considered different from the entity that was routinely identified to her and that she routinely identified as her employer, should not be prejudiced. At the same time, an employer should not be allowed to evade its responsibilities under the act by omitting to take steps to ensure the clarity of the employment relationship established.”

The full VWCC agreed, finding that “the claimant’s failure to identify her employer was due to concealment.”

AmeriCorps argued that the claimant’s ignorance of the law was no excuse and that the claimant failed to identify any statute or rule requiring AmeriCorps to advise her of its statutory employer status.

But the VWCC said those defenses mischaracterized the problem The VWCC said the clamant did not suffer from ignorance of the law. Rather, she was deprived of knowledge of a fact critical to her ability to file a timely claim, namely, the identity of her employer. “Knowledge of the Virginia law relating to the relationship between AmeriCorps and the Commonwealth of Virginia would have rendered her no less ignorant that those provisions applied to her, as she was never informed that she was an AmeriCorps employee,” the commission explained.

The VWCC found that the doctrines of estoppel and imposition applied and affirmed the decision of the deputy to allow the claim.

“In every conceivable regard, the claimant was deprived of any reasonable opportunity to discover the existence of the organization and that she was its employee. The deficiency was not ignorance of law, but ignorance of a fact necessary for the claimant to exercise rights granted to her under the law,” the VWCC concluded.