Court Opinion

ID: 9885581
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:07:49.537548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.173009
License: Public Domain

COATS, J.,
dissenting.
The Director of the Division of Worker’s Compensation may not, any more than this court itself, ignore legislative dictates or rewrite statutes to reflect her own notions of fairness and good public policy. Because section 8-42-107.2, C.R.S. (2004), simply cannot be read as forgivingly as Division Rule IY(L)(3) would have it, I would reject the rule, enforce the statute as written, and affirm (although on other grounds) the court of appeals. I therefore respectfully dissent.
Prior to 1998 the statutory scheme permitted a claimant to dispute the findings of an authorized medical examiner with a contrary division Independent Medical Exam, as long as he objected within 60 days of the Final Admission of -Liability. Although the claimant could not have any objections heard without a division IME, the statute did not specify a precise deadline for requesting one. The General Assembly, in 1998, attempted to resolve the ambiguity surrounding a claimant’s failure to expeditiously secure an IME, by requiring that one be requested within 30 days of the mailing of the Final Admission of Liability; and again in 1999, by expressly making that requirement applicable to all open cases with a date of injury on or after July 1, 1991, for which a division IME had not been requested.
Whether or not the language of these amendments could be characterized as ambiguous for some purpose, it simply did not admit of any construction involving the imputation of a provision tolling the 30-day period until the claimant was given further notice by some “triggering event,” even if such a saving provision would have been needed to preserve the constitutionality of the statute. In fact, however, construing the amendments to mean precisely what they say does not raise doubt about their constitutionality. Even without a specific time limitation imposed by statute or rule, no litigant could reasonably consider himself entitled to maintain an action in perpetuity, simply by failing to pursue his claim with reasonable expedition. See generally Lake Meredith Reservoir Co. v. Amity Mut Irrigation Co., 698 P.2d 1340 (Colo.1985); C.R.C.P. 41(b); cf. People v. Fuqua, 764 P.2d 56 (Colo.1988) (court has obligation to rule expeditiously).
Because I believe that claimants like the petitioner have already subjected themselves to dismissal by failing (for years) to proceed with a necessary component of their claims, I do not believe they are unconstitutionally harmed by a specific statutory provision for the administrative clean-up of such long-dormant cases. Unlike certain matters, like questions of constitutional overbreadth, which may be raised on behalf of others whose fundamental constitutional rights are implicated by legislative action, questions concerning due process may be raised only to the extent that a litigant is himself adversely affected. See Vill. of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, 456 U.S. 950, 102 S.Ct. 2023, 72, L.Ed.2d 476 (1982). Since I think it clear that these statutory amendments were intended to apply as written and are unlikely to have any constitutionally prohibited effect, I would address any challenges of unconstitutional application according to the peculiar facts of the individual claim — not by preemptively rewriting the statute. The failure of a claimant, like the petitioner, to pursue his objections to an FAL for more than five years before being barred does not raise for me any constitutional concern.
Because I do not believe that the 1998 and 1999 amendments to section 8-42-107.2, when read precisely as they are written, threaten to be unconstitutional, or that they could be interpreted as the Director suggests, even if they were unconstitutional, I respectfully dissent.