FOL Files “Friend of Court” Brief in Chicas Case After Supreme Court Argument
Flahive, Ogden & Latson has filed an Amicus Curiae brief with the Texas Supreme Court following oral arguments in a workers’ comp case that involves principles that are important to the way that Texas comp cases are handled at the administrative level and on judicial review. Amicus Curiae is Latin for “friend of the court.” An Amicus Curiae brief is a brief filed by a non-party to the case who has an interest or point of view on a case that the Amicus believes may be helpful to the court in resolving a dispute.
The case is Chicas v. Texas Mutual Insurance Company. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on January 22, 2019.
A dispute arose after Santiago Chicas died in a fall from a ladder on March 17, 2012. Chicas had been cleaning the rain gutters at the private home of the president of his employer at the time of his fall. Santiago’s surviving spouse, Bertila, filed a claim for death benefits and, after the carrier disputed the claim, initiated administrative proceedings at the DWC. Following a contested case hearing, an administrative law judge concluded that Santiago was not in the course and scope of his employment at the time of the accident, so that Bertila was not entitled to death benefits.
Bertila sought judicial review of that DWC decision by filing her appeal in the probate court in which the Chicas Estate was pending. The probate court dismissed the workers’ comp appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Bertila immediately re-filed in district court. The carrier filed a plea to the jurisdiction in district court, claiming that the 45-day deadline in Texas Labor Code Section 410.252 was “mandatory and jurisdictional” and that the tolling provisions under Section 16.604 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code were inapplicable. The carrier argued that the appeal in the proper court had been filed too late to invoke the District Court’s jurisdiction.
The issue of whether the deadline to file suit for judicial review in a workers’ compensation case is a jurisdictional deadline or a statute of limitations is an issue upon which the intermediate courts of appeals are divided. Most of those courts have concluded that the issue is one of jurisdiction. But one earlier decision decided otherwise, reasoning that the defense is one of limitations. The Court of Appeals in Chicas agreed with this earlier decision.
Both lines of cases rely upon the reasoning of a 17-year-old, non-WC case, called Dubai Petroleum Co. v. Kazi. In Dubai, the Texas Supreme Court partially overruled a very old (1926) case, Mingus v. Wadley, which was a workers’ compensation case. Mingus has been cited for decades for the proposition that the failure of a party to satisfy a statutory prerequisite, such as timely filing a suit for judicial review, is a jurisdictional defect that could be raised at any stage of the proceedings.
Jurisdictional arguments can be raised by a party at any stage of the proceedings (even, for the first time, on appeal). They may be challenged through the extraordinary writ of a petition for writ of mandamus. Defenses based on the statute of limitations must be raised in the pleadings and decided based on a motion for summary judgment.
FO&L’s Brief of the Amicus Curiae in Chicas focused on the distinction between deadlines to appeal an administrative decision and those that apply to the initiation of a claim. The former deadlines, the brief argues, are designed to obtain a review of the earlier decision and prevent that decision from becoming final. The later deadlines are designed to require a party to bring its claim against another party within a reasonable timeframe. FO&L argued:
Filing suit for judicial review of a workers’ compensation decision invokes a conveyor-belt review process where the purpose at each stage is to review a prior decision. The failure to exhaust an administrative step within the appropriate deadline results in a final decision. The statutory finality that occurs when a decision has not been timely appealed reveals the legislature’s expression of jurisdictional intent. This jurisdictional intent applies equally to the deadlines in place while the claim is moving through administrative dispute resolution as well as to those applicable to a modified de novo appeal seeking review of a Division decision.
Texas Mutual’s oral argument to the Court was presented by former Texas Supreme Court Justice Dale Wainwright. Scott Keller presented argument on behalf of the employee’s beneficiary, Bertila Chicas. We anticipate that the Court will issue its decision within the next several months.
FOLIO
