Hawaii Workers’ Compensation Law: Claims, Benefits, and Denials

If you’re hurt on the job in Hawaii, the state’s workers’ compensation law entitles you to medical treatment, wage replacement, and, where the injury is lasting or fatal, permanent disability or death benefits — all without having to prove your employer was at fault. Hawaii workers’ compensation law, codified in Chapter 386 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, replaces lost wages at 66⅔% of your average weekly earnings, up to a 2026 maximum of $1,240.00 per week based on a maximum weekly wage base of $1,859.91.¹ Vocational rehabilitation is also available if you can’t return to your old job.

Who the Law Covers

Coverage reaches almost everyone who works for pay in Hawaii: full-time, part-time, and temporary employees, in both the public and private sectors. What matters is whether the injury happened “by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment,” or whether a disease was caused by the nature of the work.² Two things have to line up. The injury has to be connected to your job duties, and it has to have happened while you were performing them or doing something incidental to them.

Occupational diseases qualify on the same logic, as long as the condition was caused by the work environment rather than something outside it. The burden of showing that connection rests on the employee.

Reporting the Injury and Filing a Claim

Tell your supervisor or employer as soon as the injury happens. Your employer then has seven working days to file an Employer’s Report of Industrial Injury (Form WC-1) with the Disability Compensation Division, and must give you a copy of the state’s “Highlights of the Hawaii Workers’ Compensation Law” brochure within three working days of learning about the injury.³

Your own deadline is longer, but it is strict. You must submit a written claim to the director of labor and industrial relations within two years after the effects of the injury become apparent, and in all cases within five years of the accident itself. For occupational diseases caused by exposure to carcinogens, radiation, asbestos, and similar hazards, the five-year outer limit drops away, and you have two years from the date you learn the disease was caused by your work.⁴

Missing these deadlines is one of the most common ways valid claims are lost. If an injury seems minor at first and gets worse, the two-year clock runs from when the effects become apparent, not from the original accident. Waiting still carries risk, because proving the timeline gets harder as months pass.

Medical Care

Your employer must cover all medical care, services, and supplies the injury reasonably requires, starting immediately and continuing as long as treatment is needed.⁵ That includes hospital stays, doctor visits, medications, and physical therapy.

You pick your own doctor, with one geographic rule: your initial physician must be practicing on the island where the injury occurred. For a specialist, you can choose anywhere in the state, and the director can authorize an out-of-state specialist when comparable care isn’t available locally. You can also switch doctors during treatment by following the director’s rules. In an emergency where you can’t select a doctor, your employer picks one, but that choice doesn’t bind you going forward.⁵ Provider fees are capped at 110% of the Medicare Resource Based Relative Value Scale applicable to Hawaii.

Wage Replacement While You Recover

If a work injury leaves you completely unable to work on a temporary basis, you receive weekly payments equal to 66⅔% of your average weekly wages, capped at $1,240.00 per week for 2026. If your average weekly wages fall below the minimum benefit threshold, you receive 100% of your actual wages instead.⁶

The first three calendar days of disability are not paid. If you can’t finish a regular shift because of the injury, that day counts as a full day of total disability. Your employer must start paying promptly without waiting for an official decision, unless it contests the claim in the initial injury report, and the first payment is due no later than ten days after the employer learns of the disability.⁶ Payments continue until you can return to work or reach maximum medical improvement.

Permanent Disability and Death Benefits

When an injury leaves a lasting impairment, benefits shift from temporary to permanent. Hawaii splits permanent disability in two.

Permanent partial disability compensates for a lasting impairment that still allows some work. The amount depends on a medical evaluation that assigns a percentage of impairment, paid at 66⅔% of average weekly wages (subject to the same maximum and minimum rates as temporary benefits) for a number of weeks tied to the body part affected and the degree of impairment. Permanent total disability applies when you can no longer perform any gainful work. It pays at the same 66⅔% rate for the duration of the disability.

If a work injury causes death, the employer must pay funeral expenses up to ten times the maximum weekly benefit rate and burial expenses up to five times that rate, paid directly to the mortician and cemetery.⁷ For 2026 those caps work out to $12,400 for funeral costs and $6,200 for burial.

Surviving dependents receive ongoing weekly benefits based on the deceased worker’s average weekly wages:

Surviving spouse with no dependent children: 50%.
Surviving spouse with dependent children: 66⅔%, divided as the director sees fit between the spouse and children.
Dependent children only, no surviving spouse: 40% for one child, 66⅔% split equally for two or more.
Dependent parents, no surviving spouse or children: 50% if wholly dependent, 25% if partially dependent.

These weekly amounts are subject to the same maximum and minimum rates that apply to disability benefits.⁷

Vocational Rehabilitation

If a permanent disability prevents you from returning to your previous job, vocational rehabilitation services may be available at no cost to you. The goal is to restore your earning capacity as close as possible to pre-injury levels. Services can include job training, education, and job placement assistance.⁸

Enrollment is voluntary. You have to approve any proposed plan, and you choose your own certified rehabilitation provider, who submits an initial evaluation within 45 days of referral. The rehabilitation unit within the Department of Labor then reviews and approves the plan. Retired public employees are not eligible for vocational rehabilitation benefits.⁸

When a Claim Can Be Denied

The system is no-fault, but a few circumstances still bar a claim entirely. Under HRS 386-3(b), no compensation is allowed when the injury was caused by the employee’s intoxication, by willful intent to injure themselves or someone else, or by unprovoked non-work-related fighting (unless the employee acted in self-defense). These are complete bars, not reductions.²

There is also a separate exclusion for mental stress claims. Mental stress that results solely from disciplinary action taken in good faith by the employer is not compensable. If a collective bargaining agreement sets a different standard for disciplinary actions, that standard replaces the good-faith test.²

Employers sometimes argue that an injury didn’t arise out of the employment because the worker was doing something purely personal. This defense turns on the specific facts. Routine activities like using the restroom, eating lunch on-site, or walking through a parking lot generally stay within the course of employment; a significant departure from job duties weakens the connection.

If Your Claim Is Denied

The director of labor and industrial relations has original jurisdiction over all disputes under the law.⁹ Either party can request a hearing. A hearings officer reviews the evidence and issues a decision within 60 days after the hearing.³

If either side disagrees with the director’s decision, they have 20 calendar days from the date stamped on the decision to file a written notice of appeal with the Labor and Industrial Relations Appeals Board. The appeals board holds a full new hearing rather than just reviewing the record. It can affirm, reverse, or modify the decision, or send the case back to the director for further proceedings.¹⁰ After that, either party can seek judicial review by the intermediate appellate court.⁹

An appeal does not automatically stop benefit payments unless the appeals board or court specifically orders a stay. In practice, an employer cannot freeze your checks simply by filing an appeal.

Hiring an Attorney

Hawaii does not set a fixed percentage cap on attorney fees in workers’ compensation cases. Every fee request must be approved by the director, the appeals board, or the court handling the appeal.¹¹ The reviewing authority weighs the attorney’s experience in workers’ compensation, the time required, the complexity of the issues, fees in comparable cases, and the benefits actually obtained for you.

Any attorney who collects a fee without that approval faces a fine of up to $25,000.¹¹ An approved fee becomes a lien on your compensation, so it comes out of your benefits rather than your own pocket. Confirm with any attorney you hire that the fee arrangement will go through the proper approval process before work begins.

1
Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. 2026 Maximum Weekly Wage Base and Maximum Weekly Benefit Amount
2
Justia. Hawaii Code 386-3 – Injuries Covered
3
Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. About Workers’ Compensation
4
Justia. Hawaii Code 386-82 – Claim for Compensation
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FindLaw. Hawaii Code 386-21 – Medical Care, Services, and Supplies
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-31 – Total Disability
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-41 – Entitlement to and Rate of Compensation
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-25 – Vocational Rehabilitation
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-73 – Original Jurisdiction Over Controversies
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-87 – Appeals to Appellate Board
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Justia. Hawaii Code 386-94 – Attorneys, Physicians, Other Health Care Providers, and Other Fees