Court Opinion

ID: 9668040
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:00:59.045157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:42.631520
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
RAY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the reasoning and result reached by the majority and agree that the motion for rehearing should be overruled. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that the majority’s opinion is not incompatible with the Court’s holding in Commercial Standard Fire & Marine Insurance Co. v. Martin, 501 S.W.2d 430 (Tex.Civ.App.—Texarkana 1973), judgment modified, 505 S.W.2d 799 (Tex.1974), and therefore, I do not believe that Commercial Standard has in any way been overruled.
In Commercial Standard, a worker’s compensation claimant filed an appeal against two insurance carriers, one of which had been a party to the proceedings before the Industrial Accident Board and one of which had not. The court of appeals held simply that the trial court had no jurisdiction over the insurance carrier that had not been a party before the Industrial Accident Board and had had no award made against it in favor of the claimant. The decision in Commercial Standard was obviously compelled by elementary principles and had nothing to do with limitations or considerations of fair notice.
The case at bar is factually quite different, however, and has much to do with limitations and fair notice, concepts that simply were not relevant to the resolution of Commercial Standard. The holding in the present case is that the purposes of article 8307, section 5, TEX.REV.CIV. STAT.ANN., are fulfilled when a party’s appeal of an Industrial Accident Board decision is timely filed and gives fair notice of that appeal' to the opposing party. As long as no one is misled or placed at a disadvantage, there is no practical or logical reason why the appealing party cannot go forward with his appeal. There is certainly nothing incompatible or inconsistent between that principle and the holding in Commercial Standard.
The case of Garcia v. Employers Casualty Company, 519 S.W.2d 685 (Tex.Civ.App.—Amarillo 1975, writ ref’d n.r.e.), on the other hand, is another matter. Unlike Commercial Standard, Garcia was a case involving limitations and considerations of fair *54notice. In that case, a worker’s compensation claimant filed an appeal within the limitations period, but against the wrong insurance carrier; and although the right insurance carrier had the same offices, officers, and telephone numbers as the wrong insurance carrier (so that there was very probably fair notice given to all parties), the court of appeals held that the requirements of article 8307, section 5 had not been met with respect to the right carrier. It is difficult to see how that holding can be reconciled with the majority holding in the present case, and therefore, I believe Garcia is overruled.