Updated Guidance on Washington Wage Order Disputes and Issuance of Time Loss
The general principle is that a document must be reasonably calculated to put the Department on notice that the party was taking issue with a Department decision to qualify as a dispute. Boyd v. City of Olympia, 1 Wash.App.2d 17 (2017). Applying this standard the Court of Appeals reached separate decisions on two different chart notes submitted around the time of claim closure orders. The first chart note reflected the need for additional treatment related to his low back pain, but the second chart which was primarily focused on unrelated hip treatment noted the complicating factor of his low back pain. As a result no magic words are required to indicate a dispute, but the deciding entity will look to the language of the document, rather than later expressions of intent, to determine whether a dispute has been issued.
This year, the Board has identified two decisions which offer additional guidance regarding what constitutes a dispute and the impact of disputes on time loss entitlement.
First, in In re David Gheorghita, BIIA dec. 24 12743 (2025), the claimant argued that the Board consider that employer’s 14 protests to time loss payments should be considered, in the aggregate, to amount to a dispute of the underlying wage order. The Board did not accept claimant’s argument, noting that the 14 disputes were not generic to wage paid generally, and carefully detailed the date of each order disputed. In contrast, a wage order does not authorize a specific payment, but rather a general rate at which claimant must be paid so the Board determined that employer’s dispute was specific and not general. Claimant further argued that the July 19, 2023 wage order aggrieved both parties and employer’s disputes of all specific payments should be construed as a dispute of the wage order generally. The Board did not address this argument.
Gheorghita adds a layer of complexity to the decision in Boyd. Unlike the first chart note in Boyd, a mere disagreement with the general outcome was insufficient to warrant construction of the dispute of all time loss orders as a dispute. This raises the question of whether the Board might be open to an argument regarding the aggrieved nature of the disputing party, as the July 19, 2023 wage order was issued for a slightly lower amount than the prior August 31, 2022 wage order, and employer may not have viewed themselves as aggrieved by the order disputed by claimant. Because the Board did not decide this argument it make be an issue worth raising in future appeals.
Another recent Board decision In re Dean Paculba, BIIA Dec. 23 19209 (2025) followed the general rule under RCW 51.28.040 that a claimant who experiences a change in circumstances is entitled to a wage adjustment. However, under the specific facts of the dispute claimant had allowed the original wage order, which failed to include the value of his employer-provided housing, to become final and binding. Eight months later the employer terminated the housing benefits which created a change in circumstance warranting a wage calculation adjustment.
The Board determined that claimant was entitled to a new wage order consistent with RCW 51.28.040, but denied his request for reimbursement of those benefits from November 1, 2022 through January 26, 2023 because the Department’s error in excluding the benefits was adjudicative rather than the result of clerical error, mistake of identity or innocent misrepresentation. RCW 51.32.204(2). In other words, the change of circumstances only entitled claimant to a new wage order, and not the payment of back time loss once the order became final and binding.
Generally, these decisions limit the impact of payment of back time loss to those circumstances in which a claimant proactively disputes an adverse order and does not expand the dispute rule beyond the general principle that disputes are obvious on the face of the document. However, if you have any questions about a potential dispute or its impact on the payment of time loss, feel free to contact me at or (503) 595-6103.
Posted by Madeline Mahugh.
