Court Opinion

ID: 9538345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:35:23.148921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:46.837374
License: Public Domain

JACOBSON, Presiding Judge,
dissenting:
In this troublesome area of res judicata /reopening of industrial claims, I find myself again in the minority. See dissenting opinion in Pascucci v. Industrial Commission, 126 Ariz. 442, 616 P.2d 902 (1980). Because this area is in apparent state of flux, another separate dissenting opinion is in order, if for no other reason than to crystallize for others’ consideration the principles of workmen’s compensation law involved.
In order to do this, a brief capsulizing of the facts are in order.
1. Prior to the closing of petitioner’s claim in 1975, the petitioner complained of depression, irritability, nervousness, emotional lability, and reported temporary blackouts. These symptoms were attributed by Dr. Paul Bybee to post-traumatic brain syndrome.
2. Also prior to the closing, petitioner suffered from loss of smell and sensory loss to his face. These losses did not affect his earning capacity and he returned to full time work approximately two months after his surgery.
3. In 1976, the petitioner filed his first petition to reopen his industrial claim, alleging “due to buildup of scar tissue on the brain, I have been having blackouts and *540seizures.” At this time, he had available to him an electroencephalogram and cranial tomography performed by Dr. Pittman and the tentative diagnosis of Dr. T. Scott Idzo-rek that petitioner’s symptoms of blackouts and rage episodes were due to a psycho-motor seizure causally related to the prior industrial head injury and surgery. By notice of claim status, the petition to reopen was denied. Although petitioner employed counsel following the denial, no protest was filed and the denial of the petition to reopen became final.
4. In May, 1978, the second petition to reopen was filed which is the subject of these proceedings. Following a timely denial of this petition and a timely protest, hearings were held.
Initially, it must be pointed out that the unprotested denial of the first petition to reopen constituted a determination on the merits that at that time petitioner had no new, additional, or previously undiscovered condition causally related to his industrial injury. Phoenix Cotton Pickery v. Industrial Commission, 120 Ariz. 137, 584 P.2d 601 (App.1978).
Therefore, in order to prevail on the second petition to reopen, the petitioner must comply with A.R.S. § 23-1061(H), which means he has the burden of proving that subsequent to the denial of his first petition to reopen, he became afflicted with a “new, additional or previously undiscovered temporary or permanent condition.” In order to sustain that burden, petitioner relies upon the testimony of two doctors: his treating physician, Dr. Pittman, and an expert who testified for the first time in these proceedings, Dr. Charles E. Echols. Dr. Echols is of the opinion that the psycho-motor seizures (blackouts) and the emotional lability (rage) are causally related to his industrial head injury. Dr. Pittman, while entertaining doubts as to the causal relationship between the head injury and the psychomotor seizure disorder, now, for the first time is of the opinion that there is a causal connection between the injury and petitioner’s emotional lability.
It should first be noted that the conditions for which petitioner now seeks reopening (rage and blackouts) are exactly the same conditions on which petitioner sought reopening in 1976 and were probably present at the time this matter was originally closed in 1975. It should also be noted that no additional diasgnostic tests have been performed upon the petitioner since the first petition to reopen was filed.
Thus, what the hearing officer had before him was Dr. Echols’ opinion which was simply a reinterpretation of the same diagnostic information that was available in 1976 and the testimony of Dr. Pittman who previously held no causal opinion, but now, merely through the passage of time, is willing to make a causal connection. As Dr. Pittman frankly admitted:
It was not that I changed my opinion; it is just that I viewed things a little more differently two years later, and was more willing to ascribe the symptoms, which basically were unchanged, to the brain injury, which we know he had.
(Emphasis added.)
Based upon this state of the record, the administrative law judge found that petitioner had failed to establish that he now suffers from a new, additional, or previously undiscovered condition.
The administrative law judge was on sound footing in making this determination. There is simply no doubt that the conditions causing petitioner’s problems (rage and blackouts) are not new, not additional and are not previously undiscovered — the petitioner had experienced these conditions pri- or to the original closing in 1975.
The only thing now even alleged to be “new” is the medical opinions causally relating these conditions to the industrial injury. Sound legal authority exists for rejecting the proposition that this type of evidence constitutes grounds for reopening under A.R.S § 23-1061(H).
Dr. Echols’ testimony clearly falls within the doctrine enunciated in Standard Brands Paint Co. v. Industrial Commission, 26 Ariz.App. 365, 548 P.2d 1177 (1976). That case held that medical opinions which merely *541constitute additional evidence of a diagnosis of claimant’s condition which could have been presented at the time of the original hearing, do not constitute sufficient evidence to justify a reopening. In short, a petitioner cannot prevail on a reopening simply by finding a doctor who will now testify that based upon the same medical evidence previously considered, the prior determination was incorrect. Dr. Echols’ opinion falls in this category, given the binding effect, on the merits, of the previous denial of the first petition to reopen.
As to Dr. Pittman, as the majority opinion points out, his opinion “did not involve a changed opinion but rather an evolution of opinion from a tentative to a definite form.” On this basis, the majority attempts to distinguish Aetna Insurance Co. v. Industrial Commission, 115 Ariz. 110, 563 P.2d 909 (App.1977). This evolution might be of significance under Crocker v. Industrial Commission, 124 Ariz. 566, 606 P.2d 417 (1980) and Garrote v. Industrial Commission, 121 Ariz. 223, 589 P.2d 466 (App.1978), discussed later in this dissent, if Dr. Pittman’s opinion concerning a causal relationship was the only opinion on the subject in existence at the time. It was not. As previously indicated, Dr. Bybee and Dr. Idzorek both held causal connection opinions prior to the denial of petitioner’s first petition to reopen. The fact that through the passage of time Dr. Pittman now has the same opinion previously expressed by his colleagues does not make the petitioner’s condition “previously undiscovered”; rather, it appears to me, to be simply “new evidence” concerning his known condition. This type of evidence was discussed in Aetna and rejected as forming the basis for a petition to reopen.
The majority in reaching the conclusion that previously undiscovered causal relationship testimony alone is sufficient to justify reopening relies upon three cases: Crocker v. Industrial Commission, supra; Garrote v. Industrial Commission, supra; and Pascucci v. Industrial Commission, 126 Ariz. 442, 616 P.2d 902 (1980).
I will deal with Pascucci first. In that case, the issue for determination was whether the actual discovery of claimant’s herniated disc was sufficient to justify a reopening where the issue of whether he had such a disc or a bony ridge defect had been previously litigated. The majority in Pascucci held that actual discovery of the claimant’s true condition was sufficient to allow reopening. However, Pascucci was concerned with the discovery of claimant’s actual physical condition, it being tacitly recognized in all of the proceedings that if the claimant suffered from a herniated disc, it was causally connected to his prior industrial injury. Even the majority opinion in Pascucci did not go so far as to state that simply medical opinion alone, without the verifying physical evidence of the condition, would be sufficient to allow reopening.
Crocker v. Industrial Commission, supra, has been discussed in the majority opinion. However, that discussion failed to point out that in Crocker the first diagnosis of not only the causal connection of the claimant’s symptoms to his industrial injury, but the actual organic cause of these symptoms occurred at the time of reopening. Here, early in the game, Dr. Bybee diagnosed the petitioner’s symptoms as attributable to “post-traumatic brain syndrome.” At the time the first petition to reopen was filed, Dr. Idzorek tentatively diagnosed the petitioner as suffering from psychomotor seizures causally, related to his industrial head injury. In short, in the present case, unlike Crocker, there is no initial absence of medical diagnosis.
Garrote v. Industrial Commission, supra, like Crocker, (at least according to the majority) dealt with a previously undiagnosed condition. What I have said concerning Crocker is equally applicable to Garrote.
In summary, the majority is holding that simply an evolution of the treating physician’s medical opinion, which is based upon no new medical data and which evolved opinion was held by the physician’s medical colleagues prior to a previous denial of a petition to reopen, is sufficient to comply with A.R.S. § 23-1061(H). I know of no *542authority which would support that position.
Based upon the foregoing, I would affirm the award.