Court Opinion

ID: 9546243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:26:34.164018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:11.454418
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
Once again the court has visited upon the wrong party the tolling penalty prescribed in the third paragraph of 85 O.S. 1981 § 8.1 *857Today’s opinion declares that an employer neither shown nor found to have been in violation of the § 8 command to post on-the-job notice to workers must either personally advise every worker — from whom notice of injury is received — of his right to file a claim or suffer the penalty provided in the third paragraph of § 8, by which the applicable limitation period in 85 O.S. 1981 § 43 is tolled until personal advice has been given to the worker. As in similar other cases considered previously, I write to express my disapproval of the court’s recent § 8 jurisprudence.2
When the first three paragraphs of § 8 are read together, its text clearly does not warrant applying the tolling sanction to anyone other than the employer found to have been in disobedience of the § 8 command to post the officially approved notice in a conspicuous place at the jobsite. The plainly intended target of the third paragraph’s tolling penalty was the offending employer. It is that employer only who must give personal advice to the injured worker. This is so because that employer’s worker is deprived of advice by posting. A worker injured in the service of a nonoffending employer has been advised by the posted notice. The text of that notice — approved by the Workers’ Compensation Court — communicates to workers— more fully than personal advice would ever accomplish — all the rights as well as procedure for asserting them. There is absolutely nothing in the entire § 8 which requires more advice to injured workers than is imparted by the text of the official notice that must be posted. The third paragraph of § 8 should not be mistaken for a prophylactic device — an extra safeguard against loss of rights through ignorance. Rather, it is to be viewed as a punitive measure. Its plain purpose is neither to afford every victim of an industrial accident or occupational disease an additional form of notice nor to establish personal notice as superior to posted notice. Instead, the clear objective of the measure, apparent from its text, is to deter employer noncompliance with the posting requirement by a penalty of tolling that is to be imposed on every offender who fails to provide the worker known to have been injured with the law’s only sanctioned substitute for the mandated notice by posting — personal advice.
I
THIS WORKER DID NOT SHOW HIMSELF ENTITLED TO PERSONAL ADVICE
This worker’s claim, brought below November 18, 1981 and later amended February 4, 1982, seeks benefits for two accidental events — one of May 5, 1979 and the other of February 14, 1980. The proceeding came to be initiated more than one year after each of the two accidents alleged. Since the worker relied for timeliness of his claim on the tolling provisions in § 8, he bore the burden of proving that his employer was in violation of § 8 for failure to post at the jobsite the officially approved notice. This critical element in *858the worker’s chain of proof is absent from the record. Because the worker did not establish the employer’s failure to post notice, he was not entitled to personal advice concerning his right to file a claim.
II
THE EMPLOYER’S DISSUASIVE UTTERANCES TO THE WORKER — EXPRESSING A NEGATIVE VIEW OF HIS CLAIM’S COMPENSABILITY— DID NOT OPERATE TO TOLL THE APPLICABLE ONE-YEAR LIMITATION PERIOD PRESCRIBED IN 85 O.S. 1981 § 43
The worker’s reliance for tolling upon the employer’s dissuasive utterances, by which a negative view came to be expressed of the claim’s compensability, is plainly misplaced. Unless (a) some affirmative act of concealment or (b) some misrepresentation that excludes suspicion and prevents inquiry is shown, an employer’s failure to disclose or believe that a worker’s injury may be of a compensable character will not operate to arrest the running of limitations.3
Inasmuch as there is here no showing of (a) the employer’s failure to post notice at the jobsite or of (b) the employer’s affirmative concealment or misrepresentation, the claim under review was barred by the one-year time limit in 85 O.S. 1981 § 43.
III
CONCLUSION
Because the worker’s claim was not timely filed, I would leave undisturbed both the Court of Appeals’ opinion4 and the order of the three-judge review panel.
LAVENDER and HARGRAVE, JJ., join in this view.

. The provisions of 85 O.S. 1981 § 8 are:
"Every employer subject to the provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act shall post and maintain in one or more conspicuous places a notice to its employees covering the rights and obligations of employees under the Workers’ Compensation Act. Such notice shall be prepared by the Administrator and shall be supplied to employers at no cost.
*857A supply of forms as provided by the office of the Administrator shall be made available to employees by employers subject to the Workers' Compensation Act at no cost to either the employer or employee.

In the event an employer having notice of an injury neglects to advise the injured employee of the right to file a claim under the Workers’ Compensation Act, the statute of limitations shall be tolled until such claim is filed.

Every employer, subject to the provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act, shall also post and maintain in one or more conspicuous places in or about his places of business notices in a form prescribed by the Administrator stating the fact that he has complied with the rules and regulations adopted governing the implementation of the Workers’ Compensation Act and that he has secured the payment of compensation to his employees and their dependents in accordance with the Workers’ Compensation Act.” [emphasis mine]

. Loffland Brothers Equipment v. White, Okl., 689 P.2d 311, 314-315 [1984] (Opala, J., concurring in judgment) and Armco, Inc. v. Holcomb et al., Okl., 694 P.2d 937 (1985) (Opala, J„ dissenting).

. McClenahan v. Oklahoma Ry. Co., 131 Okl. 73, 267 P. 657 [1928],

. Derryberry v. City of McAlester et al., Okl.App., 54 OBJ 1593.