Court Opinion

ID: 9856534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:50:01.673663+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:12.157371
License: Public Domain

DOOLIN, Justice,
dissenting:
The facts are succinctly stated by the majority.
We are to decide what effect an unap-pealed judgment, rendered in the Industrial Court, has on an injured employee’s right to proceed under 85 O.S.1971 § 12.1 The judg*439ment rendered by the Industrial Court was grounded upon the statutory limit of one year contained in 85 O.S.1971 § 43.2
The majority decides an employee is bound by his election to proceed under § 43 of the Act and that the judgment of the Industrial Court is an “inchoate bar”, to proceeding under § 12 of the Act. To me inchoate means an imperfect, partial or unfinished right or act exercised in this case by the employee which being partial or unfinished allows the injured workman to proceed under the alternative remedy provided.
Majority’s reliance on H. L. Hutton & Co. v. District Court of Kay County, 398 P.2d 530 (Okl.1965) which is cited in support of an election theory is not supportive, for in Hutton there was a judicial determination the claimant was not an employee. Thus, reasoned the court, he could not as an employee pursue a common law action against his employer for the determination of his status or lack thereof was res judicata. A judicial estoppel was created by the court’s judgment and was definitive in any subsequent action in any court. In the instant case there is no estoppel as to employee’s status nor has there been a judgment on the merits of the employee’s claim authorized by 85 O.S.1971 § 12.
The Industrial Court in the case at bar denied relief upon the procedural or narrow grounds of the one year statute of limitations, 85 O.S.1971 § 43; it did not reach the merits or adjudicate same. This court has correctly held that this statute of limitations operates against the plaintiff’s remedy and not upon his substantial rights.3 There has been no determination of this workman’s substantial rights by any court till this good hour.
Likewise, Haggard v. Calhoun, 294 P.2d 836 (Okl.1956) which is twice cited by the majority as being supportive is doubtful in its application. In Haggard, the injured workman brought an action in the Industrial Court for loss of an eye while engaged in a hazardous employment. For some reason the industrial case was “not prosecuted” and while it was pending, the employee brought an action ex contractu as a third party beneficiary against the employer and his insurers. Admittedly this court says that the employee cannot pursue an industrial claim when a contract action has been previously filed. Such procedure would allow “double indemnity” to such claimant. But the cited case does not deal with tort claims anticipated under Section 12 of the Act, and should have little persuasion. The instant case sounds in tort.
We have also held that the doctrine of election of remedies has no application where concurrent or cumulative remedies exist, such as here.4
More recently in Williams v. Oklahoma National Stockyards, 577 P.2d 906, 907 (Okl.*4401978) we held where a plaintiff filed claim for compensation during covered employment and the Industrial Court entered an order denying the claim for failure to show plaintiff was engaged in hazardous employment, the injured workman’s tort action was not barred by a statute of limitation. The industrial action failed otherwise than on its merits. The majority points out certain admitted distinctions in Williams which it finds as authority to deny the instant claim. I suggest they are invented. The bottom line and rule in Williams does not turn on the timeliness of a claim in the right court or unavailable remedy, but upon the failure to adjudicate on the merits.
If Williams is good law why is it more fatal to a claimant to file a late claim in the right court, than to proceed in the wrong court on a timely basis? In both cases the claimant makes a choice of forums and in both cases there is no adjudication on the merits; thus neither tort action is barred.
Also cited by the majority is the case of Assessment Bond Service v. W. R. Johnston & Co., 296 P.2d 959 (Okl.1956). This case dealt with the effect of an election made by the bond holders (lien holders) in a declaratory judgment action filed in the Federal Courts, where the bonds’ validity was established. After the conclusion of the bond decision, the real property owners brought an action in the State District Court to remove the cloud (lien claim) of the bond owners. This court held the bond holders had a choice of remedies and having elected to pursue one were barred from pursuing the other.
I suggest the effect of elections, under the bond decision, made in matters affecting enforcement of special assessment liens, idle rights and defenses thereto by the owners of real property and the statute of limitation to be applied in such cases should not be applied in tort matters and the Compensation Act.
The majority uses the analogy of prescription 5 in land titles, an invention or result of the relieving doctrines of equity (harshness of the common law), as a hammer to defeat a purely statutory right created under the Compensation Act. Our Act was passed to relieve and protect from harshness the “recognized rights” of the working man.6 The analogy of the majority is a conceptual will-of-the-wisp as evasive as a quest for “the gay motes that people a sunbeam”.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I believe the opinion flies in the face of decided and long standing case law of this state; that the Worker’s Compensation Act is remedial in nature and should be given liberal construction.
Shorn of its rhetoric, the majority opinion saddles the procedures and claims of an injured workman with a harsh, oppressive and rigid blanket not heretofore permitted by the Act and the public weal, Adams v. Iten Biscuit Co., 63 Okl. 52, 162 P. 938, 941 (1917).
I dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice SIMMS concurs in the views herein expressed.

. 85 O.S.1971 § 12:
“The liability prescribed in the last preceding section shall be exclusive and in place of all other liability of the employer and any of his employees, at common law or otherwise, for such injury, loss of services or death, to the employee, spouse, personal representative, parents, dependents, or any other person, EXCEPT that if an employer h-s failed to secure the payment of compensa1' i for his injured employee, as provided in this Act, then an injured *439employee, or his legal representatives if death results from the injury, may maintain an action in the courts for damages on account of such injury, and in such an action the defendant may not plead or prove as a defense that the injury was caused by the negligence of a fellow servant, or that the employee assumed the risk of his employment, or that the injury was due to the contributory negligence of the employer; provided, that this Section shall not be construed to relieve the employer from any other penalty provided for in this Act for failure to secure the payment of compensation provided for in this Act.” (Emphasis supplied).

.85 O.S.1971 § 43:
“The right to claim compensation under the Worker’s Compensation Act shall be forever barred unless, within one (1) year after the injury or death a claim for compensation thereunder is filed . . ”

. Clark v. Keith, 103 Okl. 20, 229 P. 613 (1924); Gaier & Stroh Millinery Co. v. Hilliker, 52 Okl. 74, 152 P. 410 (1915) and Munsingwear, Inc. v. Tullis, 557 P.2d 899, 901 (Okl.1976).
Munsingwear cites in support of the operation of the statute of limitations on the remedy only, the following cases: Oklahoma Furniture Mfg. Co. v. Nolen, 164 Okl. 213, 23 P.2d 381 (1933); Pine v. Indus. Comm’n., 148 Okl. 200, 298 P. 276 (1931); Atlas Coal Co. v. Corrigan, 148 Okl. 36, 296 P. 963 (1931); Skelly Oil Co. v. Harrell, 187 Okl. 412, 103 P.2d 88 (1940) and National Zinc Company v. Van Gunda, 402 P.2d 264 (Okl.1965).

. Weiss v. Salvation Army, 556 P.2d 598 (Okl.1976). See also Williams v. Oklahoma National Stockyards Co., 577 P.2d 906 (Okl.1978).

. See footnote No. 14 of the majority opinion. The majority relies upon Justice Jackson in Chase Securities Corporation v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 313, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 1142, 89 L.Ed. 1628, 1635 as authority that prescription time is comparable to limitations contained in legislative statutes. However at pages 314, 1142 and 1636 of the reported case of Chase Securities Corporation v. Donaldson, Justice Jackson points out:
“This Court, in Campbell v. Holt, [115 U.S. 620, 6 S.'Ct. 209, 29 L.Ed. 483] adopted as a working hypothesis, as a matter of constitutional law, the view that statutes of limitation go to matters of remedy, not to destruction of fundamental rights. The abstract logic of the distinction between substantive rights and remedial or procedural rights may not be clear-cut, but it has been found a workable concept to point up the real and valid difference between rules in which stability is of prime importance and those in which flexibility is a more important value.”

. 85 O.S.1971 § 12, see footnote 1, supra.