Court Opinion

ID: 9572624
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:43:19.92349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:33:41.307507
License: Public Domain

YETKA, Justice
(dissenting).
I would reverse the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals and hold that there is a compensable claim which is not barred by the statute of limitations. I would then remand to the compensation judge for determination of benefits.
The purpose of a statute of limitations is to give timely notice to the employer, who can then prepare a defense. The workers’ compensation statutes require that notice of injury be given to the employer and that a claim for benefits be filed within 3 years after notice of the injury.
In this case, the employee gave notice, but he filed his claim 3 years and 3 months later. The claim was filed late because the *918doctor to whom the employee was referred by the employer would not, at the time of injury, draw a causal relationship between the injury and the job. It was only when the employee’s lawyer, sometime later, urged the doctor to reconsider that the doctor gave a revised opinion. The doctor then found that the injury could have been and was caused by the job. The employee’s lawyer had filed a claim within 6 months after requesting that the doctor reconsider the matter. The doctor’s revised opinion, however, was not filed until 3 months after the 3-year statute had expired.
I believe that the result of the majority opinion will have a detrimental and costly effect on the entire workers’ compensation system. It appears to me that it is unreasonable to find that the employee should not rely on a doctor’s opinion regardless of who has hired that doctor. To hold otherwise would be to assume that the system is so adversarial that even a doctor’s opinion is suspect because it can be bought on the market either to strengthen or weaken a case, depending on who engages that physician.
Here, the employer had notice of the injury. The injured employee went to the company’s doctor, who said that there was no causal relationship between the job and the injury. If the employee and his attorney rely on that opinion, they should be entitled to bring their claim when the doctor revises his opinion. To hold otherwise, it seems to me, would have a deleterious effect on the system in three ways:
1. It will harm an employee not represented by counsel;
2. It will discourage an employee, whether or not represented by an attorney, from relying on any opinion of a company-selected doctor; and
3. It will cause injured parties to file a claim in every case of injury or disability, no matter how remotely connected to the job that injury or disability might be, in order to “play it safe,” thereby increasing litigation and expense to the entire system.
This is so because, as the majority opinion says in quoting Larson:
Larson, however, states if an employee has consulted with a doctor and has been told his injury is not job-related, “he should not be expected or encouraged to overrule his medical advisors and file a claim anyway.”
Majority Op. 4 (quoting 2B A. Larson, The Law of Workman’s Compensation § 78.41(f) at 15-259 through 15-261 (1989)).
If the majority feels that the quote from Larson makes sense, why are we affirming this opinion? I would reverse for the reasons stated both in Larson and in this dissent. I would further find that, under these facts, the employee and his attorney did not have sufficient information to justify filing a claim at the time of the initial injury because they relied on the medical opinion of the company doctor, thereby bringing this case within the rules enunciated by this court in Issacson v. Minnetonka, Inc., 411 N.W.2d 865 (Minn.1987), and Bloese v. Twin City Etching, Inc., 316 N.W.2d 568 (Minn.1982).