Ranney v. Parawax Co.
Iowa Supreme Court
582 N.W.2d 152 (1998)
After Ranney (plaintiff) was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease years after toxic exposure at his job with Parawax (defendant), doctors he consulted through 1987 gave no definitive causal opinion, but by 1987 or 1988 his wife's law school coursework on occupational-disease causation led him to personally believe his work had contributed to his illness; only in 1991 did a new doctor confirm the causal link, and Ranney filed his workers' compensation claim in 1992, which the industrial commissioner and a state district court found time-barred under the two-year statute of limitations.
Whether the statute of limitations for a workers' compensation claim begins running when the claimant knows or has reason to know that his injury is possibly compensable.