Opinion ID: 2087795
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: WCC 93-6139, 95-5023 and 95-5024 consolidated)

Text: On consolidated appeals to a three-judge panel of the WCC's Appellate Division, the panel reversed the trial judge's finding in 93-6139 that allowed the MOA amendment. After a review of the various possible limitations periods that might apply to employee's claims, the panel held that neither § 28-35-45 nor § 28-35-61 were applicable to the proposed MOA amendment at issue. Instead, the panel reviewed various cases from this Court and concluded that unless the original MOA contained a misdiagnosis whereby a discrete disabling injury was inadvertently omitted from the MOA, an employee must file a petition to amend as an original petition for benefits and must do so within the limitations period of § 28-35-57. Therefore, according to the panel, for such a petition to amend to be considered timely (that is, a petition that seeks to include another injured body part within the injury description contained in the original MOA), the petition must be filed within the limitations period for filing an original petition for such benefits under the applicable version of § 28-35-57. The panel noted further that unlike other statutes of limitations, those periods of limitation specified in the WCA have been heldto be more akin to statutes of repose because they terminate any right of action after the applicable time period elapses irrespective of whether there has been a discoverable injury as yet. See Salazar v. Machine Works, Inc., 665 A.2d 567, 568 (R.I.1995). As a result of its ruling in 93-6139, the panel denied and dismissed employee's petition in 95-5024 to enforce compensation payments under the amended MOA, holding that there was no WCC order or decree requiring employer to make any payments of compensation to employee after the decree in 87-9010 terminated compensation payments to employee as of September 6, 1988, nor would a petition requesting such relief have been timely in any event. Finally, the panel denied and dismissed employee's petition to review in 95-5023 based upon an alleged return of incapacity because of her neck injury as of September 7, 1988, and continuing (the period after the 87-9010 decree that terminated compensation payments to employee), agreeing with the trial judge in 95-5023 that the doctrine of res judicata operated to bar employee's claim because it was actually litigated between these same parties and finally decided, on its merits, in 89-8002. The panel then upheld the trial judge's determination that as of June 13, 1994 (the date of the trial judge's 93-6139 decree that added the neck injury to the earlier MOA), employee failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence any recurrence of incapacity because of her neck injury. The trial judge in 95-5023, according to the panel, properly used her discretion when she elected to find that employer's medical experts were more persuasive than employee's medical experts on this issue.