Court Opinion

ID: 9628486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:22:02.256363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:06.239573
License: Public Domain

OP ALA, Justice,
concurring in judgment.
The court holds that “in eases where it can be proven that an employer has ... received actual notice of an employee’s injury, paragraph three of 85 O.S. 1981 § 8 requires that the employer advise the injured employee of his right to file a claim under the Workers’ Compensation Act.”.
*315[emphasis original] Because I would ascribe a different and more restrictive meaning to the language of paragraph three in § 8,11 cannot join in the court’s pronouncement although I do concur in its judgment.
Section 8 came to the body of our statutory law with the comprehensive revisions of 1977 which became effective July 1, 1978.2 Its first paragraph commands “[e]very [covered] employer” to post a notice “in one or more conspicuous places ... [of] the rights and obligations of employees under the ... Act”, [emphasis original] It also requires the trial tribunal’s administrator to prepare the text of the notice and to supply copies thereof at no cost.
The third paragraph, whose meaning is here in contention, provides that “the statute of limitations” for filing a claim shall be tolled until the claim is filed, if the employer having notice of an injury “neglects to advise the injured employee of the right to file a claim ...”
The text of the notice the statute requires to be posted, prepared by the trial tribunal for dissemination after the effective date of the 1977 amendments, contains the following language:
“Claims for accidental injury not filed with the [Workers’ Compensation] Court within one year from the date of injury are forever barred. Claims for occupational disease not filed with the Court within eighteen (18) months of either the last hazardous exposure or the date the disease first becomes manifest, whichever last occurs, are forever barred.”3 [emphasis mine]
The notice required to be posted was intended by the legislature to advise every covered employee of the statutory time limit for bringing a claim. The text of the notice form prepared by the trial tribunal is in strict conformity to the statute’s unmistakable command.4
There is no proof in the record of the case before us that the employer did post the statutory notice at the jobsite. Because the employer (a) was not in compliance with the posting provisions of paragraph one in § 8, and (b) failed to show that, on receiving knowledge of claimant’s injury, the employer advised claimant “of the right to file a claim under the Workers’ Compensation Act”, the statute of limitations stood arrested by the terms of paragraph three in § 8.
I would therefore vacate the opinion of the Court of Appeals and substitute for it a pronouncement holding that an employer who fails to post the statutory § 8 notice cannot invoke the one-year time bar5 without first showing by competent evidence to the satisfaction of the trial tribunal that, upon receiving knowledge of the claimant’s injury, he advised claimant of “the right .to file a claim” and that this advice had been given more than one year before the claim was filed.
LAVENDER and HARGRAVE, JJ., join with me in these views.

.The first three paragraphs of 85 O.S. 1981 § 8 provide:
"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.
A 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. * * ” [emphasis mine].

. Okla.Sess.Laws 1977, c. 234, § 1 et seq.

. Form No. 1A, page 84, Handbook of the Workers’ Compensation Court, eff. August 15, 1978.

. An employer who has posted the § 8 notice is under no duty to advise an injured employee of his right to file a claim. The text of the posted notice contains all the information to which an injured employee is entitled under the provisions of § 8.

. 85 O.S. 1981 § 43.