Opinion ID: 2632141
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: ¶ 10 In workers' compensation jurisprudence, jurisdiction is used in two different contexts. More often it refers to a jurisdictional issue, such as that which is tendered when the claimant's status qua respondent's employee is in contest. [16] Once an issue is identified as jurisdictional, it calls for a de novo review. [17] In the other jurisprudential context, which is implicated here, cognizance (as the synonym of jurisdiction) denotes a restriction on the Workers' Compensation Court's power to act rather than a direction whose mistaken application to the case at hand would be no more than error of law. If a statute provides merely a rule of law to govern the subject matter with which it deals, failure to follow it strictly is but an error of law, not an act in the absence of the court's power. [18]