Miss the 60-day deadline and the workers' comp petition is over - even when the delay sits with the board.
The Supreme Court of California ruled on August 24, 2026 that the state's Workers' Compensation Appeals Board cannot extend its own deadline to act on a petition for reconsideration, upholding a lower-court ruling. If the board does not rule within 60 days, the petition is denied automatically - regardless of why the board fell behind.
The case started with an injured worker awarded total and permanent disability for an injury he suffered in December 2013 while working for Ross Valley Sanitation District. His employer filed a timely petition for reconsideration on March 23, 2023. The board sat on it. It later said it had not received notice of the petition until on or about June 15, 2023, and it did not grant the petition until 144 days after filing.
The board relied on a 1992 decision, to argue it could pause the clock whenever a petition arrived late through no party's fault. The court disagreed and disapproved the 1992 decision in part. Equitable tolling exists to excuse litigants from filing deadlines such as statutes of limitations, the court said. The board is not a litigant, and section 5909 is not a statute of limitations - it simply tells the board when to act.
The worker's award dated to March 2023, but he had received nothing, even though the employer's own window to seek review closed on July 6, 2023. Letting the board toll its own deadline, the court said, "opens the door to open-ended extensions of the time for the Board to act."
For carriers and employers, the rule is now concrete. Board silence is not a pause. Once 60 days pass without action, the petition is dead by operation of law, and the filing party has 45 days to take the matter to the Court of Appeal. The same deadline marks when an award becomes final.
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association backed the worker's position and challenged the board's use of "grant-for-study" orders to give itself more time.
