Workers' Compensation Funding in Ohio

For an injury claim, an application must be filed with the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, a managed care organization, or the Industrial Commission within one year of the date of injury — shortened from two years for injuries occurring on or after October 1, 2017 (Ohio Rev. Code §4123.84). Occupational-disease claims and violation-of-specific-safety-requirement (VSSR) filings retain a two-year period (Ohio Rev. Code §4123.85).

An employer that complies with Ohio's workers' compensation system — by paying premiums and maintaining coverage — is immune from an employee's civil suit for a work-related injury or occupational disease (Ohio Rev. Code §4123.74). The exception is Ohio's statutory intentional-tort claim (R.C. §2745.01), which requires the employer to have acted with deliberate intent to cause an injury — a standard the Ohio legislature narrowed significantly after earlier, more permissive case law, making a successful intentional-tort claim against an Ohio employer comparatively rare.

Temporary total disability is paid on a sliding scale — generally 72% of the worker's full weekly wage for an initial period, stepping to 66⅔% thereafter — up to a statewide maximum wage figure set annually (Ohio Rev. Code §4123.56). Permanent partial disability follows a statutory schedule of weeks for enumerated losses, with non-scheduled permanent partial disability rated as a percentage of impairment (Ohio Rev. Code §4123.57). There is no separate aggregate dollar cap beyond this rate-and-schedule structure.

Ordinary pre-judgment interest is not a feature of Ohio's BWC/Industrial Commission process; disputes over delayed or improperly denied benefits are addressed through the system's own administrative remedies rather than a civil interest calculation.

Ohio's system is administered by the Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC), with contested claims heard by hearing officers of the Industrial Commission of Ohio (IC) — not by an Ohio court of common pleas in the first instance, though an intentional-tort claim under R.C. §2745.01 is filed as an ordinary civil action in the county where the claim arose or a defendant resides (Ohio Civ.R. 3).

Ohio regulates consumer litigation funding under the Non-recourse civil litigation advance contracts (current); replaced by a new consumer/commercial framework effective October 6, 2026 (H.B. 105), Ohio Rev. Code § 1349.55 (current, through 10/5/2026); Ohio Rev. Code §§ 1357.01–1357.10 (effective 10/6/2026). Current law imposes no fixed rate cap — only an APR-style disclosure recalculated every 6 months.

Why does Ohio's shortened one-year filing deadline matter more here than in most other states?

Since 2017, Ohio gives an injured worker only one year to file an initial injury claim, compared with the two- or three-year windows common elsewhere, so any delay in reporting the injury or filing the initial claim carries more immediate risk of losing the claim altogether in Ohio than it would in a longer-window state.

This makes prompt claim filing and documentation a higher early priority for an Ohio workplace injury than for the same injury in many other states in this profile, and it is a standard first question in evaluating the timing posture of any Ohio comp-related matter.

How hard is it to bring an Ohio intentional-tort claim against an employer, and why does that matter for funding?

Ohio's legislature narrowed the intentional-tort exception to require deliberate intent to cause injury, not just knowledge of a dangerous condition, which makes a successful claim against the employer itself comparatively rare in Ohio compared with some other states' broader exceptions.

As a practical matter, this means the realistic higher-value path in most Ohio workplace-injury matters runs through a non-employer third party — an equipment manufacturer, a subcontractor on a job site — rather than an intentional-tort theory against the employer, which should be evaluated early and separately from the underlying comp claim.