Court Opinion

ID: 9697204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:08:34.606927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.943218
License: Public Domain

Coleman, J.
(dissenting). The Court has held "that the one-year-back provision [of the Worker’s Compensation Act] is a defense which can be waived”. I consider it a limitation on the Worker’s Compensation Appeal Board’s authority and thus dissent.
*385In Loucks v Bauman, 356 Mich 514; 97 NW2d 321 (1959), the WCAB failed to apply the one-year-back provision. Chief Justice Dethmers and two other justices said in one opinion that the provision "does not impose a limitation of actions * * * which may be deemed waived by defendant’s failure to assert it as a defense, but, on the contrary, it places a limitation on the power of the appeal board which cannot be waived by parties”.
In a separate concurrence, Justice Edwards agreed that the WCAB erred by not applying the provision:
"Whatever the reason may be for the appeal board’s omission, in my view, the language of the [provision] is clear and * * * it bars recovery in the fact situation presented as to any compensation prior to [the one-year-back date].”
This analysis was echoed by the Court of Appeals in Baldwin v Chrysler Corp, 67 Mich App 61; 240 NW2d 266 (1976), where the defendant, injured in 1943, filed a petition for compensation on February 10, 1972. The Court read the one-year-back provision and made this analysis:
"We do not read the foregoing as a statute of limitations, but rather as a limit on the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board’s authority to order the payment of benefits. Thus any benefits awarded prior to February 10, 1971, would not be authorized by law, and the order appealed from is erroneous as far as it requires payments prior to February 10, 1971.”
In Kleinschrodt, the Court today has overruled Loucks and Baldwin on the basis of a not altogether accurate footnote in Kushay v Sexton Dairy Co, 394 Mich 69; 228 NW2d 205 (1975), a footnote which was appended to the statement that Sexton *386"failed properly to preserve” certain issues "and that there is, therefore, no need to address the merits of those issues”. The Court’s opinion hangs on this slender thread. It does not justify its conclusion on legal or policy grounds. I find it unconvincing and would uphold the reasoned conclusions in Loucks and Baldwin. I would affirm.
Ryan, J., concurred with Coleman, J.