Opinion ID: 1434260
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: standard of review under the pre-1978 and post-1978 workers' compensation laws

Text: Consistent with the pre-1977 institutional design, a trial judge's decision was amenable to intra-court review in a forum then called the State Industrial Court en banc. [12] The terms of 85 O.S. 1971 § 77  now repealed and replaced with 85 O.S.Supp. 1977 § 3.6  provided that the en banc tribunal, upon review of a trial judge's decision shall issue such order, decision or award as it may deem proper, just and equitable. When this institution came to an end with the creation of the Workers' Compensation Court, the power of its successor (the three-judge panels)  created by the terms of § 3.6  came to be curtailed. The new institution  the three-judge review panel  is not free to reverse at will a trial judge's finding. No fact issue is presently subject to intra-court re-examination unless the panel has first determined that a judge's finding upon it ... was against the clear weight of the evidence or contrary to law. [13] It is this restriction that constitutes the only significant change effected in the intra-court review process by the 1977 legislation. Because it is limited by the clear-weight-of-the-evidence standard, a panel may reverse or modify the trial judge's findings only after these findings have been determined to be lacking in the requisite evidentiary foundation.
Pertinent language in 85 O.S. 1981 § 26 clearly provides that [t]he decision of the Court [Workers' Compensation Court] shall be final as to all questions of fact, and except as provided in ... [§ 3.6], as to all questions of law. [emphasis added]. This section, now and before the 1977 amendments, refers to that decision of the trial tribunal, whether made by the trial judge or by the panel, which is deemed final. Because in contemplation of law the trial judge's decision, when altered, stands replaced with that of the review panel, there is never more than one final decision to be reviewed in the appellate courts. Identical to that in the pre-1977 law, [14] the quoted language in § 26 continues to govern review in this court and in the Court of Appeals. Its text unequivocally and unmistakenly limits appellate reviewing power to questions of law. When the panel-substituted decision is tendered for corrective relief, it must hence be reviewed by applying the law's traditional any-competent-evidence test of correctness. [15] Under this standard our responsibility simply is to canvass the facts, not with an object of weighing conflicting proof in order to determine where the preponderance lies but only for the purpose of ascertaining whether the tribunal's decision is supported by competent evidence. [16] By force of § 26, all findings of fact made in the trial tribunal's decision under review are conclusive and binding unless they have been ascertained to lack support in competent evidence. [17] It is only in the absence of such support that a trial tribunal's decision may be viewed as erroneous as a matter of law and hence subject to appellate vacation. [18] In conclusion, § 26 governs the standard of review affordable in the Supreme Court or in the Court of Appeals, while § 3.6 controls the trial tribunal's intra-court re-examination process. The latter restricts the panel's power over a trial judge's fact finding to a review upon application of the clear-weight-of-the-evidence standard. When panel-substituted fact findings are under review in an appellate court, the corrective process is confined to issues of law and is hence governed by the any-competent-evidence test. We need not decide here whether the panel-substituted order made in this proceeding is supported by competent evidence. That order must be set aside as facially defective. It is devoid of the critical, statutorily-mandated panel determination that the trial judge's finding (that claimant sustained an accidental personal injury on September 19 and 20, 1982) was against the clear weight of the evidence. In the absence of that finding, the panel order must be regarded as unauthorized by law. [19]