Opinion ID: 1251580
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Dissenting Opinion Would Bankrupt the OP Fund

Text: Should the dissenting opinion be adopted by this Court the result is crystal clear. The mere filing of a claim would reap OP benefits 100% of the time. [2] The dissent seeks to justify this disastrous approach by relying on the decision in Javins v. Workers' Compensation Commissioner, 173 W.Va. 747, 320 S.E.2d 119 (1984). The dissenting opinion has done a great disservice to Workers' Compensation law by its mischaracterization of Javins. According to the dissenting opinion, since no evidence in this case contradicted the employee's evidence of 5% OP impairment, under Javins, `medical evidence indicating the highest degree of impairment'5% in this caseshould have been adopted to support an award for the claimant. Such a misapplication of Javins is unfortunate. By allowing the submission of a claim without a proper hearing, the dissent seeks to circumvent a procedure the Legislature deemed mandatory, and would prevent the Office of Judges from having a complete and adequate record upon which to base its final decision. A proper application and correct analysis of Javins requires this Court to do exactly what the majority opinion didremand for a hearing so that the OP Board may review the claimant's new evidence. In fact, Syllabus Point 1 of Javins states that medical evidence indicating the highest degree of impairment, which is not otherwise shown, through explicit findings of fact by the Occupational Pneumoconiosis Board, to be unreliable, incorrect, or clearly attributable to some other identifiable disease or illness, is presumed to accurately represent the level of pulmonary impairment attributable to occupational pneumoconiosis. (Emphasis added.) Javins recognizes that the OP Board has a duty to comment upon new OP evidence submitted by a party. However, the dissenting opinion seeks to ignore the plain language in Javins which recognizes the Legislative requirement that a protesting party present its new evidence to the OP Board. Instead, the dissenting opinion suggests that under Javins a full hearing is not required. To the contrary, Javins clearly states that once the OP Board has fulfilled its statutory duty of examining new evidence submitted by a party, and concludes that such evidence is not unreliable, incorrect, or clearly attributable to some other identifiable disease or illness, then the medical evidence indicating the highest degree of impairment is presumed to reflect the claimant's level of pulmonary impairment. The Board's duty in this regard could not be fulfilled without a full hearing. Finally, the crux of the position taken by the dissent results in automatic entitlement. Obviously, if the OP Board is denied the opportunity to comment upon the new evidence submitted by a claimant, under Javins the employee's evidence must always prevail. In essence, any employee who files a claim, protests, and then submits his or her new evidence without allowing for OP Board comment, will be awarded benefits. Employees who want to hit the jackpot just need to file a claim. The dissent's reality for West Virginia is a bankrupt OP fund. The sad truth is, the dissenters do not care. I concur with the majority opinion.