Gabler v. Embassy Suites Hotel

Gabler v. Embassy Suites Hotel
1991 OK CIV APP 26
815 P.2d 201
62 OBJ 2677
Case Number: 75445
Decided: 03/19/1991

SHELLEY MARGARET GABLER, PETITIONER,
v.
EMBASSY SUITES HOTEL, ROYAL INSURANCE COMPANY, AND WORKERS' COMPENSATION COURT, RESPONDENTS.

Original proceeding to review order of Workers' Compensation Court Three-Judge Panel; Ben P. Choate, Jr., Trial Judge.

¶0 Three-judge panel reversed award of benefits holding that the claim was barred by the statute of limitations. Employee appeals, contending that the statute of limitations runs from the date of the last payment for authorized medical treatment, instead of the date that treatment was rendered.

REVERSED AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.

F. Michael McGranahan, Tulsa, for petitioner.
Kevin D. Berry, Rhodes, Hieronymus, Jones, Tucker & Gable, Tulsa, for respondents.

REIF, Presiding Judge.

¶1 Employee seeks review of the three-judge panel's reversal of an award of benefits. The panel held that her claim filed January 25, 1989, for an admitted job-related injury of February 1, 1986, was "barred by the two (2) year statute of limitations. 85 O.S. § 43 (1985)."

¶2 In response, Employer argues that the statute of limitations should not be measured from a "random element" such as payment of medical bills. Employer urges that the claim would be untimely filed if measured from the last authorized medical treatment rendered in October 1986. In contrast, Employee contends that if measured from February 1987, the last payment of that treatment, the claim was timely filed.

¶3 Section 43 provides in pertinent part that "a claim may be filed within two (2) years of the last payment of any compensation or remuneration paid in lieu of compensation or medical treatment which was authorized." (Emphasis added.) This plain language leaves no room for interpretation and forecloses the courts from substituting a different event for measuring the statute of limitations than the one specified by the legislature, even if the legislature's choice is "random" and contrary to the majority rule prevailing in other jurisdictions.

¶5 REVERSED AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO REINSTATE THE TRIAL COURT'S AWARD OF BENEFITS.

¶6 BRIGHTMIRE and MEANS, JJ., concur.

Footnotes:

1 On the date of Employee's injury, the applicable statute of limitations was the amended version of § 43 provided in Laws 1985, ch. 266, § 4, the pertinent part of which is subsection (A) and has remained unchanged through the most recent statutory supplement. See 85 O.S.Supp. 1990 § 43 (A).

2 Prior to its amendment in 1985, § 43 expressly provided that a claim could be filed "within one (1) year from last authorized medical treatment." The 1985 amendment deleted this and substituted the language "within two (2) years of the last payment of any compensation or remuneration paid in lieu of compensation or medical treatment which was authorized." (Emphasis added.)