Court Opinion

ID: 9693589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:51:21.031268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:48.791472
License: Public Domain

PEDERSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I do not agree with the inference left by the majority opinion that the Workmen’s Compensation Bureau must bear the burden of proving that this claimant is not entitled to an award. The preponderance of the evidence, supplied by his own doctors, indicates that Aus has recovered sufficiently from his injury to permit him to return to work. There is evidence that he was malingering. The Bureau should have no responsibility to refute a speculation that there might be a genuine conversion hysteria which: (1) has “no physiological or anatomical basis,” (2) “was not explored to any great length,” and (3) is impossible to probe.
The need for a hearing at which live witnesses would be examined and cross-examined might have been helpful but does not reach constitutional due process dimensions. Aus did not strenuously dispute the Bureau’s argument that no hearing was demanded until the case reached this court. We have often said, and it is elementary, that objections must be ordinarily raised below to afford an opportunity to correct claimed errors before we will consider them on appeal. It shouldn’t be necessary that the Bureau get a waiver in writing.
When we said in Steele v. N.D. Workmen’s Comp. Bur., 273 N.W.2d 692, 702 *915(N.D.1978), that the need for a hearing must be judged on its merits in each case, I thought it meant that the Bureau would do that judging and we would only get involved when someone sought an extraordinary remedy.
The denial of the claim should be affirmed.