Court Opinion

ID: 9513200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:32:43.239914+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:46.395042
License: Public Domain

NEUMANN, Justice,
concurring specially.
I cannot join Justice Mesehke’s opinion today because I share some of Chief Justice VandeWalle’s concern regarding the injection of affirmative defense jurisprudence into our workers’ compensation statutory framework. In my opinion, the affirmative defense issue was not adequately briefed and argued to us. Without adequate presentation to aid my ponderous thought processes, I fear the possibility of unintended consequences. I, therefore, am not yet ready to join in placing on the Bureau the burden of asserting the affirmative defense of statute of limitations.
Nevertheless, I concur in the result, and vote to affirm the district court’s reversal of the Bureau’s dismissal of Roberta Anderson’s claim. The Bureau, in asserting Anderson’s claim was not timely filed in 1994, argues Anderson should have brought her claim some ten years earlier, when it was first suggested her carpal tunnel symptoms, which at that point were relatively mild, might be work-related. Despite the fact the Bureau makes that argument today, I find it very difficult to believe the Bureau would have accepted liability in 1984 for what would have been presented as a work-related repetitive stress injury that had not yet caused any lost job time, or required the claimant to incur any medical expense beyond a pair of wrist splints. Without some assurance the Bureau would have acted in 1984 in a manner consistent with the argument it makes today, I cannot agree with its dismissal of Anderson’s claim.
MARING, J., concurs.