Opinion ID: 1179569
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: absence of evidence to show a changed condition is at best a failure of proof rather than a jurisdictional defect

Text: The Workers' Compensation Court has exclusive original jurisdiction over all proceedings for compensation which is legally due for an on-the-job injury. [14] This statutory cognizance includes all conceivable § 28 proceedings. [15] The trial tribunal's power to reopen a claim over which it already has acquired jurisdiction cannot be drawn into question. [16] The § 28 requirement that a reopening claim be predicated on a worker's subsequently changed condition is not to be viewed as a jurisdictional barrier in the sense that the necessary elements of proof cannot be supplied by agreement or be waived by the parties; rather, it should be regarded as an essential or indispensable evidentiary component  a sine qua non of the required proof. A stipulation by the parties that is intended to dispense with proof of that indispensable element in a reopening claim does not extend beyond the tribunal's jurisdiction. It is hence fully effective. [17] An award of the Workers' Compensation Court in a § 28 proceeding in which there was no proof of a changed condition is not fraught with jurisdictional infirmity. It is simply erroneous for want of essential proof and subject to vacation on direct review. [18] To the extent that our past decisions may have inadvertently referred to proof of a changed condition in a § 28 proceeding as a jurisdictional prerequisite, their language is hereby withdrawn and disapproved. [19] Failure of critical proof to support a cognizable claim does not affect the tribunal's jurisdiction over the proceeding before it. Because we find the worker's quest for organ substitution should be viewed as one to reopen the original claim and hence within the compensation court's cognizance, we must next decide whether there was a failure of proof to show a changed condition or whether the employer's in-court stipulation was sufficiently broad to dispense with this probative requirement.