Opinion ID: 2627717
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: All Workers' Compensation Time Bars are Remedial in Nature And Can Be Lifted By Tolling To Restart The Expired Limitations Period

Text: ¶ 4 The law's time limits for bringing an action are either remedial or substantive. The former, called statute-of-limitation time bars, extinguish uninvoked remedies; the latter destroy unexercised or unasserted rights. Right-targeting legislative time bars are often referred to as statutes of repose. A claim barred by passage of time set by a substantive-law bar cannot be resurrected. An expired right may not be revived. [5] ¶ 5 No substantive-law time bar is present in any part of this state's compensation law. All time bars of that law are purely remedial. [6] If the worker's claim (or any of its components) were affected by a time bar of our substantive law, once the clock had run it could never be set in motion again. Since all compensation-law time bars are merely procedural, each of them can be tolled, even after its full passage, to restart the limitation period that otherwise would result in the extinguishment of the remedy. [7] ¶ 6 None of the Workers' Compensation Act's time bars for prosecution of a worker's claim (or any of its components) (a) has ever been held to lie outside the remedial arena of limitations or (b) was ever held to be unaffected by the impact of limitations that are purely remedial. Unless the Legislature expressly declares its time bar to be of a substantive-law nature (non-remedial), it can always be tolled or waived. [8] B.