Opinion ID: 609806
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Prior Board Practice

Text: 18 The Benefits Review Board's decision is particularly indefensible because the Board itself used to apply to Longshore Act cases the rule it now contends is applicable only in Black Lung cases. In the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits, the Board used to require service in Longshore Act cases before it considered filing complete. 9 Ray v. Assoc. Electric Cooperative Inc., BRB No. 89-1318 BLA, slip op. at 2 (1990). Because it believed that Gee, supra, established a contrary rule for the Second Circuit, it initially deemed service unnecessary to complete filing there. Ray, BRB No. 89-1318, slip op. at 2. The Board subsequently decided to make its rule for the Second Circuit universal. It did so after it interpreted the Seventh Circuit's decision in Jeffboat, supra, to hold that filing did not require service in Longshore Act cases. Ray, BRB No. 89-1318, slip op. at 4. However, the Board simply misread both Gee and Jeffboat. As we have pointed out above, neither case considered the question at issue here, and neither supports the rule that filing in Longshore Act cases may be completed even though the claimant and the employer have not been served. Both deal only with the question of service on counsel. Thus, the Board's abandonment of its prior practice of construing the identical provisions of the Black Lung Act and Longshore Act identically in the Third, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits was the product of a legal error. The Board's prior practice was correct and statutorily mandated. 10