Court Opinion

ID: 9642574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:03:18.257749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:49.677157
License: Public Domain

Condon, C. J.,
dissenting. I am constrained to dissent because I am of the opinion that the alleged petition for review is not authorized by general laws 1956, §28-35-45, under which it purports to be brought, but is in reality designed to reopen the hearing on the original petition to enable the trial commissioner to correct the error which he made therein. This court has heretofore consistently held that a petition for review under the above section of the workmen’s compensation act must be confined within the limits expressly set out in that section. See Moulis v. Kennedy’s, Inc., 82 R. I. 364; Priscilla Worsted Mills v. Vizzacco, 80 R. I. 342; E. Turgeon Construction Co. v. Andos*158cia, 79 R. I. 347; Day v. Almac’s Inc., 79 R. I. 357. If a broader right of review is desired it may properly come only by an act of the legislature and not by judicial fiat. However appealing to our sense of justice the facts of the instant case may be, it is not within our province to grant relief where the law does not authorize it. The power to amend the law so that it will afford the relief sought here lies elsewhere.
Maróéllo A. Tropea, Anthony Grilli, for William. Paul Ricci.
Ambrose W. Carroll, for United States Rubber Company.
I must express my disagreement with the majority view that Hanley v. Westminster Motors, Inc., 80 R. I. 22, is authority for their decision in the instant case. In the Priscilla Worsted Mills case, this court distinguished the Hanley case. In that case the specific injury was not described but only the area of the employee’s body where the injury was located. On the contrary, in the instant case the specific injury is described in the decree and the employee is seeking to show under his petition for review that he was incapacitated by a different injury. The discussion in each of the above-cited cases clearly points out that this may not be done under such a petition.
Therefore I would grant the petition for certiorari and quash the record in W.C.C. No. 4679 on the ground that the workmen’s compensation commission was without jurisdiction under the petition therein filed to reverse or modify its final decree in W.C.C. No. 527.
Andrews, J., concurs in this dissent.