Court Opinion

ID: 9795713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:36:50.886145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:33:18.127831
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
dissenting.
T1 In a remarkable feat of wizardry the court today transmogrifies a 1998 Workers' Compensation Court's dispositional clause (whose settled meaning stands confined to liability for pre-award medical treatment expenses)1 into an explicit judicial grant of expenses for postaward continuing healthcare maintenance. Adding insult to injury, the court utilizes a common-law doctrine of estoppel-unavailable in the trial tribunal-to impose upon the employer a public-law liability.2 I must recede from today's pronouncement.
*3872 The Workers' Compensation Court is a statutory tribunal of narrow cognizance.3 It possesses only that jurisdiction which is conferred on it by law;4 it may not enlarge its authority by borrowings from the common law.5 Today's departure from settled doctrine means that an employer's pure, judicially uncommanded postaward largesse (by voluntarily paying for the worker's posta-ward prescription medication) may be later invoked to saddle it with future hability for a worker's unadjudicated postaward medical expenses. In short, the court's sua sponte invocation of "estoppel" impermissibly extends the trial tribunal's narrow range of cognizance and imposes on the employer an obligation not cognizable by law.
[ 3 The genesis of this controversy is quite simple. Claimant is the beneficiary of a permanent total disability award which directs his employer to pay "reasonable medical expenses." - In the trial tribunal's critical 1998 order no mention is made of postaward expenses for health-maintenance. There is absolutely nothing in that adjudication which entitles the claimant to any postaward medical benefits he now seeks. Extant case law teaches that absent some explicit finding in a permanent disability award the employer is responsible only for pre-award medical expenses.6
14 I would not hence resort today to a substantive common-law doctrine to saddle this employer with compensation liability. I would, instead, send the claim back to the trial tribunal whence it came with directions to adjudicate claimant's plea for the expenses of his continuing postaward heath-maintenance care, subject, of course, to all those defenses the employer might press in a pos-tremand proceeding.

. The relevant text of the 1993 order's disposi-tional clause in contest here is:
"THAT respondent and insurance carrier shall pay all reasonable and necessary medical expenses incurred by claimant as a result of said injury."
The language of the quoted dispositional clause has a settled meaning. Its obligatory sweep is confined to pre-award treatment expenses. Bill Hodges Truck Co. v. Gillum, 1989 OK 86, ¶ 7, 774 P.2d 1063, 1066.

. The Workers' Compensation Act imposes upon employers public-law liability, which can neither be abridged nor expanded by agreement of the parties. Laws external to the body of the Workers' Compensation Act may not be invoked to create an employer's obligation for compensation, and extra-statutory doctrines will not be recognized as an available foundation for creating an employer's obligation for payment of compensation. - Compensation liability is imposable solely by orders of the trial tribunal. See 85 O.S.1991 § 46; Parkhill Truck Co. v. Brewer, 1960 OK 187, ¶ 10, 354 P.2d 774, 777. Because *387the norms that govern compensation of workers for an on-the-job injury or death constitute public law, agreement between employers and employees can never attain legally binding force without the trial tribunal's approval. Jobe v. American Legion #7, 2001 OK 75, ¶ 19, 32 P.3d 860, 867; Rowland v. City of Tulsa, 1999 OK 75, ¶ 6, 988 P.2d 1282, 1286 (Opala, J., dissenting); Special Indem. Fund v. Reynolds, 1948 OK 14, ¶¶ 7 and 8, 188 P.2d 841, 842; Texas Pac. Coal & Oil Co. v. Morrison, 1931 OK. 166, 298 P. 270, syl 1.

. The Workers' Compensation Court is a statutory tribunal of limited jurisdiction which lacks power to invoke substantive norms of the common law in aid of its narrow subject-matter judicature. Pine v. Davis, 1944 OK 10, ¶ 6, 145 P.2d 378, 380 (citing Parkhill Truck Co. v. Emery, 1933 OK 539, ¶ 4, 27 P.2d 333, 335-36; O'Mara v. Andrews, 1930 OK 520, ¶ 3, 293 P. 257, 257; Wilson Drilling Co. v. Beyer, 1929 OK 379, ¶ 18, 280 P. 846, 849). See also Camps v. Taylor, 1995 OK 23, ¶ 2, 892 P.2d 633, 637 (Opala, J., concurring); Cities Service Gas Co. v. Witt, 1972 OK 100, ¶ 14, 500 P.2d 288, 291; Bryant-Hayward Drilling Co. v. Green, 1961 OK 127, ¶ 7, 362 P.2d 676, 677; Union Indemnity Co. v. Saling, 1933 OK 481, 26 P.2d 217, 221.

. Cities Service Gas Company, supra note 3, at ¶ 14, at 291; Bryant-Hayward Drilling Company, supra note 2, at ¶ 7, at 677; Camps, supra note 2, at ¶ 3, at 637 (Opala, J., concurring).

. McCormack v. Oklahoma Publishing Co., 1980 OK 98, 613 P.2d 737, 740. See also Cities Service Gas Company, supra note 3, at ¶ 14, at 291; Rosamond Construction Co. v. Rosamond, 1956 OK 13, ¶ 16, 292 P.2d 392, 395-96; Hardy Sanitarium v. De Hart, 1933 OK 337, 22 P.2d 379, 381.

. Bill Hodges Truck Co., supra note 1, at ¶¶ 6 and 7, at 1066-67 (once an adjudication for permanent disability has been made, claimant is no longer entitled to medical treatment without a finding that explicitly authorizes postaward provision of continuing regime of maintenance health care).