Opinion ID: 2224555
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Effect of Plant Closing.

Text: Oscar Mayer next contends that Tasler is barred from receiving any workers' compensation benefits as a matter of law because she continued to work until the plant closed, despite the injuries now claimed. Our case of McKeever Custom Cabinets v. Smith, 379 N.W.2d 368 (Iowa 1985), is cited as requiring an employee to have missed work because of injury in order to establish eligibility for benefits. The court of appeals reversed the district court on this point. The relevant issue in McKeever related to an interpretation of the two-year statute of limitations contained in chapter 85 of the code on workers' compensation. Section 85.26(1) provides: No original proceeding for benefits under this chapter ... shall be maintained in any contested case unless such proceeding shall be commenced within two years from the date of the occurrence of the injury for which benefits are claimed.... The question in McKeever concerned the meaning of date of the occurrence of the injury for application of the statute of limitations. We chose between an interpretation that fixed the date of injury when pain prevented the employee from continuing to work and one that fixed it when the pain occasions the need for medical attention. We said: We incline toward the former of these alternatives; clearly the employee is disabled and injured when, because of pain or physical inability, he can no longer work. Applying this interpretation, we held that the employee was not barred by section 85.26(1) because the injury occurred for time limitation purposes, when he gave up his job and that the two-year statute of limitations then began to run. This holding was limited to the question of computing the time for limitation purposes under section 85.26(1). It sets no requirements of proof in cumulative injury cases, otherwise, particularly when the employee, as here, would be foreclosed from any showing by the fortuitous circumstance of the plant's closing.