## Facts

- Peter Levins worked for General Cable Corporation at its plant.
- On July 29, 1935, while performing his job duties, Levins struck his head on an overhead beam.
- Levins went to the employer’s on-premises first-aid room shortly after the incident.
- Dr. Kovarsky, the company physician, removed a foreign body from Levins’s left eye.
- A few days later, Levins returned to Dr. Kovarsky and reported that his eye had not improved; Levins contended he was not reexamined at that visit.
- On September 23, 1935, Levins consulted an outside eye specialist and learned that the retina of each eye was detached, leaving him almost blind.
- Levins filed a workers’ compensation claim seeking benefits for his eye disability, asserting that the July 29 workplace incident caused the condition.
- It was conceded that Levins did not provide the employer with formal statutory notice of injury within the required period.
- The deputy commissioner and the Middlesex County Court of Common Pleas awarded compensation benefits to Levins.
- General Cable appealed, contending that the claim should be barred due to lack of statutory notice and lack of proof that the employer had “actual knowledge” of the occurrence of injury within 90 days, and also disputing whether the evidence supported compensability of the later-diagnosed detached retinas.

## Issues

1. Whether the lack of timely statutory notice bars compensation when the employer, through its on-premises first-aid facility and company physician, had timely actual knowledge that a work-related injury occurred.
2. Whether the employer’s timely knowledge must include awareness of the ultimate diagnosis and full extent of disability (bilateral retinal detachment and near blindness) to satisfy the statute and support an award.

## Decision

- The Court of Errors and Appeals affirmed the judgment sustaining the workers’ compensation award to Levins.
- The court held that the statutory notice defect did not defeat the claim because the employer had timely actual knowledge of the occurrence of an injury through Levins’s immediate report to the first-aid room and treatment by the employer’s physician.
- The court rejected the argument that the employer had to know the precise medical condition (detached retinas) within the notice period; knowledge that an injury occurred in the course of employment, together with the employee’s reported eye symptoms and treatment, was sufficient.
- The court left undisturbed the compensation tribunals’ findings supporting compensability, including the causal connection between the workplace incident and the resulting eye disability.

## Legal Principles

- Under New Jersey workers’ compensation law, a failure to give written statutory notice does not bar recovery if the employer has actual knowledge of the occurrence of the injury within the statutory period.
- Actual knowledge may be shown where an employee promptly reports to the employer’s first-aid room and is examined or treated by the employer’s medical personnel for symptoms tied to a workplace incident.
- The required knowledge concerns the occurrence of a work-connected injury and related symptoms, not early awareness of the ultimate diagnosis or the final degree of disability.
- Findings of compensability and medical causation made by compensation authorities are sustained on appeal when supported by competent evidence.

## Conclusion

General Cable Corporation v. Levins affirmed a compensation award where the employee did not give formal notice, but the employer—through its first-aid room and company doctor—had timely knowledge that an on-the-job incident occurred and that the employee was experiencing eye-related symptoms requiring treatment; the later discovery of bilateral retinal detachment and near blindness did not defeat the claim or the tribunals’ supported findings of compensable disability.


General Cable Corporation v. Levins, 11 A.2d 61 (1940)