Opinion ID: 2639064
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: a claim for compensation is governed by the statute in force at the time the accident occurred

Text: ¶ 6 Claimant contends first that her request for a hearingfiled within three years of the amended claim's filing, alleging a new, additional and different accident date,satisfies the § 43(B) requirements. Amos' second argument is that her act of filing the amended claim operates to toll, arrest, suspend, or waive [13] the § 43(B) requirements. [14] Amos alternatively urges the COCA opinion, at minimum, should be vacated and the claim returned to the WCC for a hearing on the second alleged injury. [15] Respondent argues simply that claimant has done nothing to arrest the § 43(B) time-lapse provision and the claim is hence unenforceable. ¶ 7 Ordinarily, claims for workers' compensation awards must either be granted or denied. [16] They stand subject to involuntary dismissal solely for want of an employee's timely-pressed request for a claim's hearing. [17] A worker's quest to receive compensation for an on-the-job injury is a statutory public-law proceeding rather than a private dispute. [18] When resolving a public-law issue, if the aggrieved party's brief advances the wrong reason for a decision's vacation the reviewing court is free to grant corrective relief from the urged error on an applicable theory chosen sua sponte i.e., a theory that supports the assigned error but was neither advanced below nor on appeal but is dispositive of the issue raised by the aggrieved party. [19] It is hence not necessary that we address ourselves here to the litigant's arguments and authorities. The propositionsadvanced by both parties and pressed hereare based on a statutory text that was not in force when the accident occurred. ¶ 8 Because neither party here identifies the correct statute that governs the claim under consideration, it is our duty sua sponte to supply the correct statutory norm of law. [20] That governing norm here is the enactment in force at the time of injury§ 43(B) in its 1994 version. In Cole v. Silverado [21] an employer attempted to bind claimant's rights by a statute that became effective after the claim's filing. We held that statute uninvocable and the claimant's rights to be governed by the law in force at the time of the claim's filing. This was so because the amendment was enacted after the proceeding was begun and, because it altered the claimant's substantive rights. Here the very same change that occurred after the claim arose but before the claim's filing would be binding in this case. We hold that the same result as in Cole must follow here. If we did not pronounce the amended statute uninvocable, the claim would stand subject to substantive law changes enacted after the injury. The right to compensation clearly vests at the time a worker is injured. [22] ¶ 9 Amos' first alleged job-related accident occurred on 7 August 1997. The statute in force at that time was 85 O.S. Supp.1994 § 43(B). [23] This 1994 enactment gives a claimant five (5) years from the date of a claim's filing to request a hearing. [24] Amos clearly had fivenot threeyears from the date of her initial claim's filing to request a hearing. Because she filed her original claim on 15 June 1998, Amos had until 15 June 2003 to request a hearing. Her motion, filed on 5 April 2002, was well within the temporal limit prescribed by the provisions of 85 O.S. Supp.1994 § 43(B). [25]