Court Opinion

ID: 9577718
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:37:18.817795+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:08.148114
License: Public Domain

Caporale, J.,
dissenting in part.
While I agree with the majority’s disposition of the appeal filed by the employee, Bryan Surratt, and with its conclusion that the evidential issues raised by the employer, Watts Trucking, and its carrier, Aetna Casualty Insurance Co., on cross-appeal need not be addressed, I disagree with its determination that Surratt’s appeal was not frivolous as that term is used in Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-824(2) (Reissue 1989).
No matter how one attempts to disguise Surratt’s operative assignment of error, it is nothing more than a claim that the compensation court erred in believing one expert rather than another. As the majority opinion itself establishes, the proposition that the compensation court is not required to take *40an expert’s opinion as binding and may accept or reject such an opinion is so well established that to argue otherwise can only be described as legally absurd.
While I certainly would not want to adopt a judicial policy which would chill the litigation of new propositions of law ultimately ruled to be meritless, or chill efforts to apply old propositions to newly developing factual patterns, I do think we owe litigants a judicial policy which discourages the relitigation of propositions which have repeatedly been held to be meritless in well-established contexts. Only under such a judicial policy can there ever be any hope of once again achieving some semblance of currency in the work of the courts.
Accordingly, I would order Surratt’s attorneys to pay the employer and its carrier jointly the sum of $1,500 to apply toward the services of their attorneys in this court.