Court Opinion

ID: 9698418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:49:54.20491+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:40.842968
License: Public Domain

TERRY, Associate Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the judgment of reversal and remand, and I join in Judge Ferren’s opinion except for the last two sentences and footnote 5. I part company with my colleagues over their refusal to allow the employer, on remand, to present additional evidence (if it has any) on the issue of work-relatedness.
At this stage of the proceedings, we simply do not know if the employer has any other evidence which it failed to offer at the hearing, whether because of the examiner’s erroneous ruling or for some other reason. Since we are remanding the case to the Department for further proceedings, I see no reason to foreclose the employer from presenting at the remand hearing any additional evidence it may have — including any evidence it may have obtained in the two and a half years since the earlier hearing — to overcome the statutory presumption of compensability. See D.C.Code § 36-321(1) (1988). Realistically, I doubt that the employer has such evidence, but I am not willing to close the door entirely to the possibility that it may exist. I would simply remand the case to the Department for further proceedings, leaving it to the Director (or the hearing examiner, if the case is sent back to him) to determine the course of those proceedings and the issues to be addressed. See, e.g., Jones v. District of Columbia Department of Employment Services, 553 A.2d 645, 647 (D.C.1989) (on remand “[t]he Director ... is free to reverse her decision ... [and] to determine whether there is any statutory basis for reopening the case before the hearing examiner”); Thomas v. District of Columbia Department of Labor, 409 A.2d 164, 174 (D.C.1979) (upon holding that the presumption of involuntariness was not overcome, case remanded “for appropriate action consistent with this opinion,” but without further restriction); cf. Lockhart v. Nelson, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 285, 102 L.Ed.2d 265 (1988) (after appellate ruling that certain evidence was inadmissible at trial, retrial is not barred by Double Jeopardy Clause even though, without the inadmissible item, evidence would not have been sufficient to convict; government is free to introduce additional evidence, if it has any, at retrial).