Opinion ID: 2506556
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Board Permissibly Denied the Irbys' Penalty Request.

Text: The Irbys also challenge the board's denial of their request for a penalty against Fairbanks Gold for failing to pay benefits to them beginning in October 2003, when the second jury found that Irby died in the mining accident. The Irbys sought a penalty under AS 23.30.155(e), which requires that compensation be paid within seven days unless a notice of controversion is filed. A controversion must be made in good faith to protect the employer from a penalty. [42] Here, the board found that the case was one of first impression, either because of the issue of whether a controversion filed after the issuance of a presumptive death certificate was made in good faith, or because of the unsettled legal questions about the interaction of a presumptive death certificate and the statute of limitations in a workers' compensation case. Partly as a result of the novel legal questions involved, the board stated that we cannot find the employer did not act in good faith in filing its controversion. [43] It is not clear from the board's decision whether its determination regarding the controversion was a fact-based or a legal decision. The Irbys contend that Fairbanks Gold had not one shred of evidence that Edward Irby was alive after the second presumptive death hearing, To the extent the board based its finding of good faith on rumors of Irby's survival, rumors or speculation alone cannot serve as a basis for a good faith controversion. [44] But the 2004 controversion was based primarily on legal or equitable defenseslaches and the statute of limitationsrather than factual issues. Either defense could serve as the good faith basis for a controversion because a good-faith controversion can be based on a legal defense. [45] Undisputed evidence showed that the Irbys filed their workers' compensation claim more than a year after the accident. If the Irbys had presented no evidence or argument justifying their filing of the claim at the time they did, the board might have accepted Fairbanks Gold's legal argument that the statute of limitations had run or its equitable argument that it had been prejudiced by the length of time between the accident and the claim filing. Either defense could have resulted in denial of the Irbys' claim. Fairbanks Gold's reliance on the timeliness defenses was unsuccessful, but was not legally implausible. Because Fairbanks Gold raised colorable legal arguments that were based in part on undisputed facts, we affirm the board's decision that Fairbanks Gold's 2004 controversion was not made in bad faith.