Opinion ID: 2087795
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: wcc 93-6139

Text: In 1993 employee, through new counsel, filed a second petition to amend the MOA (WCC 93-6139). This time employee alleged that the MOA did not accurately and completely set forth and describe the nature and location of all injuries sustained by [her] in 1986. Once again employee sought to amend the 1986 MOA to include her neck injury in addition to her left-shoulder injury. In her brief to this Court, employee asserted that inexplicably the original MOA had failed to state that she also had suffered a neck injury at the same time that she suffered her left-shoulder injury. The employer opposed the petition by arguing (1) that the applicable three-year limitations period for filing compensation claims (§ 28-35-57) barred any amendment to the MOA that would add a neck injury, and (2) that the proposed MOA amendment was barred by the doctrine of res judicata. With regard to employer's § 28-35-57 argument, the court noted that there was some ambiguity in the WCA concerning what limitations period, if any, applied to the petition to amend the MOA. The trial judge stated that the document under review was an MOA, and therefore § 28-35-45, [4] whichgoverned review and modification of decrees, did not apply. Nor did § 28-35-61 [5] apply, according to the trial judge, because that section also dealt solely with decrees. Instead, the court held that § 28-35-5 applied. Because that section failed to indicate a specific limitations period for petitions addressed to an MOA that fails to set out correctly all the injuries received by the injured employee, the trial judge found that employee's petition was timely. Nevertheless, the trial judge held that the Statute of Limitations that is applicable to [§ 28-35-5] although not stated in the act is ten years. I believe that this Court should not hold it to be six months, [which is the period specified in § 28-35-61 for amending a decree]. In support of his ruling, the trial judge stated that MOAs are not really agreements to the extent that they represent an agreement reached by both sides in a workers' compensation case. They are in reality a unilateral document usually filed by the employer    . I believe the [limitations period] most applicable with respect to a Statute of Limitations [that] should be applied for the petitioner to amend the Memorandum of Agreement    is ten years. The trial judge noted that the WCA failed to indicate the appropriate limitations period that would be applicable to petitions filed under § 28-35-5. The case that came closest to commenting on this issue was Vieira v. Davol, Inc., 120 R.I. 944, 948, 392 A.2d 375, 377 (1978), in which this Court merely assumed, without deciding, that § 28-35-57's usual limitations period (three years when the trial judge faced this issue), did not apply to petitions filed under § 28-35-5 and that the employee's petition thereunder was therefore timely. The Vieira Court noted that § 28-35-5 has no explicit limitation for such appeals. Viera, 120 R.I. at 948, 392 A.2d at 377. The Vieira Court further assumed, without deciding, that a party [could] have an agreement modified under § 28-35-5 and not just have it set aside, id. at 949, 392 A.2d at 377, but observed in a footnote that [t]he employee might, however, face a problem with the statute of limitations in bringing a new action if the agreement were nullified after the statute had run. Id. at 949 n.3, 392 A.2d at 377 n.3. Based on the dearth of case law, and on the premise that the WCA should be construed liberally in favor of employees, the trial judge applied a ten-year limitations period by analogy to § 28-35-45 (specifying a ten-year-limitations period for review and modification of agreements and decrees). Furthermore, the trial judge held that there was no res judicata effect pertaining to the ability of employee to petition to amend an MOA. The trial judge ruled that the earlier petition to amend, 88-4912, had been voluntarily withdrawn without prejudice. According to the court, the version of Article II, Rule 2.23(A) of the WCC Rules of Practice that was in effect when the earlier trial judge hadallowed the withdrawal did not require such a withdrawal to be with prejudice. See W.C.C.  R.P. 2.22(a) (former version) (A Supreme Court order dated March 10, 1994, substituted W.C.C.  R.P. 2.23(A) for the former Workers' Compensation Court Rules of Practice). Therefore, according to the trial judge, employee's 1993 petition to amend the 1986 MOA (93-6139) was not barred by the doctrine of res judicata; moreover, according to the trial judge, the amendment aspect of petition 88-4912 had never been litigated on the merits. As a result, the trial judge ordered the 1986 MOA to be amended to add employee's neck injury, but the court's order failed to indicate whether employer was therefore responsible for any compensation payments due to employee by virtue of that order. The employer timely appealed this 1993 order allowing the MOA amendment to the WCC's Appellate Division.