Opinion ID: 2614055
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the applicable statute of limitation

Text: It is the employer's argument that a claimant, who has filed Form 3 for an on-the-job accident but later undergoes a changed condition attributable to that injury, must amend Form 3 within the two-year statutory period or be forever barred from compensation. If this analysis were legally correct, it would render nugatory all the provisions of § 43 C which plainly authorize a reopening claim whenever there is a changed condition which (a) unfolds itself to the expert after the last prior award and (b) increases disability or brings about the recurrence of claimant's healing period. Section 43 C [17] provides a longer limitation period for reopening the claim on changed conditions than that available to the claimant under § 43 A [18] It is plain that the former applies to reopening claims, while the latter governs solely the original claim's filing. To be timely under § 43 C, an employee's § 28 reopening claim must be filed within three hundred weeks [19] after the last prior order. Claimant's evidence is consistent solely with a § 28 reopening theory. [20] If Benning succeeds in ascribing the after-manifested pathology of his cervical spine to the 1987 lower-back injury, [21] his Form 9 plea is to be dealt with as a § 28 quest for additional compensation. [22] The panel's specific finding of fact on this threshold issue is imperative. If it be resolved in favor of the claimant, the timeliness of the reopening claim under § 43 C might be in issue. If it be found that the facts adduced do not support a compensable change of condition since the last prior order, there will be no need for a legal conclusion on the limitations issue. Although the witnesses do not agree on the exact date Benning first reported his cervical injury, it is clear that the need for medical attention to his neck first became apparent after the last award of 1988. [23] When an after-manifested [24] condition is shown to the tribunal's satisfaction to be medically related to an on-the-job injury and increases disability or triggers recurrence of the healing period, it affords a tenable legal basis for additional relief. [25] Here, compensability for the claimant's changed condition does not depend on the timeliness of a Form 3 amendment but rather upon the timeliness of a § 28 reopening claim measured by § 43 C.