Court Opinion

ID: 9539506
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:05:16.247647+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:54.603091
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The Motion for Rehearing is DENIED for the following reasons:
(1) The employee, who was injured on May 24, 1974, had not perfected her workers’ compensation rights by obtaining Board award or order or Board-approved settlement before the 1978 legislative act. Thus her claim never became a “vested right” before the statutory change and, instead, it had become extinguished by the passage of time. It was already dead when the change in the law occurred effective July 1, 1978. Consequently, the enlargement in the law would not apply retroactively. When Pritchard v. Savannah R. Co., 87 Ga. 294 *204(13 SE 493) (1891), cited in the appellants’ motion, is applied properly, it supports the decision rather than appellants’ position.
The “inchoate right” which appellants contend the employee had in fact never “became vested and unalterable” because she did not obtain a Board award or order or Board-approved settlement. Before the 1978 amendment, she would have needed such a foundation upon which to then ask for a change in condition. She had not taken this important step, so there was no right upon which to seek a change in condition.
By the time the act amended the prerequisite for seeking a change in condition, the statute of limitation had run against claimant’s opportunity to perfect that underlying claim. What the amendment did was to liberalize the prerequisite. No longer was a Board award or order of Board-approved settlement necessary as a foundation for seeking a change in condition. Any manner of establishing her condition would have been enough, such as by a settlement which was not submitted to the Board. But it was too late to show such, because the law in effect during the time she had an opportunity to perfect the basis for later claiming change of condition, required her to obtain the Board award/order/approved settlement. Her right was not extinguished by the 1978 amendment, which actually broadened the bases, but rather it was extinguished by the passage of time prior to the 1978 amendment. It had been “inchoate” up to the time of the running of the statute of limitation. By June 30, 1978, she no longer had it; the effectiveness of the act did not revive it the next day.
(2) As to the question of law/question of fact argument, it is the construction and application of the law to the facts as found that was erroneous below. We did not find different facts or disregard those found below. Rather we said that change of condition could not be considered in the absence of a prior Board award/order/approved settlement under the factual circumstances of this case.