Court Opinion

ID: 9609976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:34:49.460186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:01:45.281012
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority’s decision to dismiss the petition for review of the Board’s order on reconsideration. In dismissing the petition, the majority asserts that it need not decide whether ORS 183.482(6) applies to workers’ compensation cases. 152 Or App at 125. It bases that assertion on its conclusion that the order on reconsideration changed the original order in a nonminor, material manner. Thus, even if ORS 183.482(6) were applicable to this case, petitioner had to submit an amended petition for judicial review within 30 *127days of the order on reconsideration. The majority fails, however, to provide any convincing support for its conclusion that the order on reconsideration so changed the original order as to require the filing of an amended petition. Because I believe that the addition of the attorney-fee award to the order on reconsideration was not a change that required the filing of an amended petition if ORS 183.482(6) applies to this case, I believe that we must decide whether ORS 183.482(6) applies to workers’ compensation cases.
The majority notes that we have questioned whether ORS 183.482(6) applies to workers’ compensation cases. 152 Or App at 125 nil and accompanying text. See, e.g., SAIF v. Fisher, 100 Or App 288, 291 n 2, 785 P2d 1082 (1990). We have held that subsection (5) of ORS 183.482 does not apply to workers’ compensation cases, but that was a narrow holding that was premised on the fact that that subsection includes a procedure that the legislature specifically removed from our review authority under ORS 656.298. United Foam Corp. v. Whiddon, 92 Or App 492, 493, 758 P2d 435 (1988). We have not held that the statute as a whole does not apply to workers’ compensation cases.
Respondents argue that the legislative history of ORS 656.298 indicates that the legislature intended to make ORS 183.482(6) inapplicable to workers’ compensation cases. Indeed, in Fisher, 100 Or App at 291 n 2, we recognized that there was some concern by the legislature about whether ORS 183.482 as a whole should apply to those cases. The concern, voiced by Senator Hill, was that ORS 183.482 was redundant of procedures already applicable to those cases or, where not redundant, was inappropriate. We further noted, however, that in the context of workers’ compensation cases, subsection (6) of ORS 183.482 was neither redundant nor inappropriate. Id. Moreover, there is nothing in the legislative history that supports a conclusion that the legislature intended to overrule our earlier decision in Fischer v. SAIF, 76 Or App 656, 659-60, 771 P2d 162 (1985), rev den 300 Or 605 (1986), in which we applied ORS 183.482(6) to a workers’ compensation case. Fisher, 100 Or App at 291 n 2.1
*128It is true that certain portions of ORS 183.482 are redundant of ORS 686.298, see, e.g., ORS 183.482(1) and (4), or facially inapplicable to workers’ compensation cases, see, e.g., ORS 183.482(2) and (3). Unlike those subsections, however, ORS 183.482(6) is neither redundant of a provision of the Workers’ Compensation Law nor, on its face, inapplicable to workers’ compensation cases. In fact, there is nothing in our earlier decisions or in the various revisions of the Workers’ Compensation Law to indicate that it should not apply to those cases. Hence, I conclude that ORS 183.482(6) applies to this case. Accordingly, the dispositive question is whether the addition of an award of $500 in attorney fees to the order on reconsideration is a sufficient modification of the original order to trigger the requirement that petitioner file an amended petition for judicial review.
The majority concludes that the award of attorney fees materially changed the original order by conferring additional substantive relief, 152 Or App at 125, and therefore required an amended petition. I disagree. I believe that the legislature amended ORS 183.482(6) to require a petitioner to file an amended petition only when the changes to the original order are significant enough to lead the petitioner to reevaluate the wisdom of going forward with the review process. Hence, minor changes are those that, from the petitioner’s perspective, do not affect the essential nature and reasoning of the decision. In this case, petitioner seeks review of the Board’s conclusion that petitioner is responsible for claimant’s compensation. The Board’s order on reconsideration did not change that conclusion or the facts and reasoning that supported it. Indeed, should petitioner prevail on review, the issue of attorney fees, insofar as it applies to *129petitioner, would itself be moot. In the past 15 years, the legislature has tried to streamline and make more efficient the workers’ compensation process and the appeal and review process. See, e.g., Or Laws 1985, ch 734, § 5; note 1 above. To require petitioner to file an amended petition when the underlying facts relevant to its decision to seek review have not changed would fly in the face of that legislative effort.
Finally, the majority concludes that ORAP 4.35(4)(a) also requires dismissal of this case. That rule requires a petitioner who has filed a petition for judicial review to file an amended petition when an agency withdraws the order on which review was sought and enters an order on reconsideration. It provides that the court will dismiss a petition if the required amended petition is not filed within the time limit that applied to the original petition. The rule apparently is based on ORS 183.482(6) as it read before the legislature amended it in 1989 to permit review to go forward without an amended petition when the order on reconsideration “affirms the [original] order or modifies the order with only minor changes.” We have the authority to waive our rules for good cause on our own motion. ORAP 1.20(4). Because ORAP 4.35(4) is inconsistent with ORS 183.482(6), and because of the circumstances under which petitioner faded to file an amended petition in this case, I would waive ORAP 4.35(4) and permit the review to go forward.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from the decision to dismiss the review of the order on reconsideration.

 In fact, the legislative history of the 1989 amendment to ORS 183.482(6) indicates that it was adopted to respond to what one representative perceived as a *128“glitch” that had come to light in a workers’ compensation case. Representative Edmundson proposed the amendment to address what he saw as an unnecessary and expensive step in the judicial-review process. Referring to a workers’ compensation case that was then pending before the Supreme Court, Representative Edmundson explained that one of the issues in that case was the effect of SAIF’s failure to file an amended petition after the Board had withdrawn its order and then republished it without modification. He stated:
“SAIF has been caught by [this] trip in the rope. It’s happened to me in other cases, in our practice in our office. We file the amended petitions and it just seems like extra expense that really shouldn’t have to be gone through.”
Tape recording, House Subcommittee on Civil Law, May 8,1989, Tape 94, Side B.