Corporate Resource Mgmt., Inc. v. Southers

• Decision Date: 12 June 2007
• Docket Number: Record No. 2694-06-2.
• Citation: 50 Va. App. 20,646 S.E.2d 10
• Parties: CORPORATE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, INC. v. Lourenda SOUTHERS.
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals

646 S.E.2d 10

50 Va. App. 20

CORPORATE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, INC. v. Lourenda SOUTHERS.

Record No. 2694-06-2.

Court of Appeals of Virginia, Richmond.

June 12, 2007.

John T. Cornett, Jr. (Roger L. Williams; Daniel E. Lynch; Williams & Lynch, Richmond, on brief), for appellant.

Timothy J. Healy (Law Office of Timothy J. Healy, on brief), Richmond, for appellee.

Present: ELDER, KELSEY and McCLANAHAN, JJ.

D. ARTHUR KELSEY, Judge.

Corporate Resource Management, Inc. (CRM) appeals an award of the Workers' Compensation Commission to Lourenda Southers for an injury to the C5-6 facet joint of her cervical spine. Relying on Code § 65.2-601's two-year statute of limitations, CRM claims the commission had no jurisdiction to award compensation for a neck injury because the only timely claim asserted by Southers identified her injury as a "contusion to the left shoulder." We agree and reverse the commission's award.

I.

In 2003, Southers fell down some steps and landed on her left shoulder. Represented by counsel, Southers claimed her accident caused bruising to her left shoulder. CRM accepted the claim without contest after Southers executed a memorandum of agreement specifying the "nature of injury" and "parts of body affected" as a "contusion to the left shoulder."

More than two years after the accident, Southers sought compensation for an injury to the C5-6 facet joint of her cervical spine. CRM denied the claim on several grounds, including the two-year statutory time bar codified in Code § 65.2-601. Though acknowledging Southers never filed a timely claim "alleging any neck injury," the commission rejected CRM's assertion of the time bar. By a majority vote, the commission stated that the statutory time bar applied only to "an untimely filing of a claim for a body part unrelated to that reflected in the initial claim for benefits." (Emphasis added.) The commission then reasoned that the time bar did not apply to Southers's case because her accident did not involve "injuries to two separate body parts." A dissenting commissioner disagreed, finding the majority's reasoning inconsistent with Shawley v. Shea-Ball Constr. Co., 216 Va. 442, 219 S.E.2d 849 (1975), the leading case interpreting the statutory time bar.¹

Both the majority and the dissenting commissioners, however, agreed on the facts. The evidence before the commission included Southers's testimony conceding that she had never filed "any claims for a neck injury" and that neither CRM nor its insurance carrier attempted to dissuade her from doing so. Seeking to explain her reason for not filing a timely neck-injury claim, Southers testified (despite medical records suggesting otherwise) that she did not "suffer from neck pain" prior to the expiration of the two-year limitations period and never complained of neck pain to any treating physician during that period.

II.

An injured employee must file a claim with the commission within two years of the accident. If the claimant fails to meet this filing deadline, the right to compensation "shall be forever barred." Code § 65.2-601. Unlike an ordinary statute of limitations, this statutory bar acts as a "jurisdictional" limitation on the commission's remedial powers. Shawley, 216 Va. at 445, 219 S.E.2d at 852; see also Stuart Circle Hosp. v. Alderson, 223 Va. 205, 208-09, 288 S.E.2d 445, 447 (1982); Barksdale v. H.O. Engen, Inc., 218 Va. 496, 497, 237 S.E.2d 794, 795 (1977). In the absence of a genuine dispute of material fact, the question whether "a claim is barred by the statute of limitations is a question of law." Tuck v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 47 Va.App. 276, 284, 623 S.E.2d 433, 437 (2005).

Our analysis begins with Shawley, the governing precedent on the jurisdictional nature of the statutory bar.² In that case, an employee fell from a ladder and filed a timely claim for injuries to his "right hip and left ankle." Shawley, 216 Va. at 443, 219 S.E.2d at 850 (describing claim in a memorandum of agreement). After the expiration of the filing deadline, the employee filed an "additional claim for alleged back and right leg injuries." Id. at 443, 219 S.E.2d at 851. The employer refused to pay, arguing the new claim had not been timely filed. The commission agreed, holding the employee failed to file a "claim for injury to the back or right leg" within the (then one-year) statutory limitations period. Id.

On appeal, the employee in Shawley argued it was "not necessary to specify all injuries in his original claim" filed with the commission. Id. at 446, 219 S.E.2d at 853. The Virginia Supreme Court flatly disagreed, holding "an employee must assert against his employer any claim that he might have for any injury growing out of the accident." Id. (emphasis added). Stressing the "jurisdictional" nature of the filing deadline, Shawley held that the employee's claim for injuries to his back and right leg was "forever barred," id. at 445-46 219 S.E.2d at 852, because these injuries were not identified in the original, timely-filed, claim—which listed only injuries to his "right hip and left ankle," id. at 443, 219 S.E.2d at 850.

Our most recent application of the statutory time bar, Tuck, 47 Va.App. at 283-84, 623 S.E.2d at 436-37, involved an untimely claim for a "neck" injury when the timely claim, memorialized in a memorandum of agreement, identified injuries only to the "lower back and right shoulder." The commission had disallowed the untimely neck-injury claim, holding that the "requirement that a claim be timely filed under Code § 65.2-601 is jurisdictional" and no statutory or equitable exception suspended its operation in this particular case. Tuck v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., VWC File No. 204-66-57, 2005 Va. Wrk. Comp. LEXIS 274, at *10 (Apr. 8, 2005). A dissenting commissioner disagreed, arguing that the employer knew of the neck injury and should not be relieved of the obligation to compensate for that injury simply because the memorandum of agreement "did not list `neck'" among the injured body parts. Id. at *21. We affirmed the majority's view, holding that the neck claim was "barred by the two-year statute of limitations pursuant to Code § 65.2-601" and that none of the proffered exceptions to the statutory bar applied. Tuck, 47 Va.App. at 286, 623 S.E.2d at 438.³

Here, Southers made a timely claim for a "contusion to the left shoulder" and an untimely claim for an injury to the C5-6 facet joint of her cervical spine. Departing from its reasoning in Tuck,⁴ the commission interpreted the Shawley time bar to apply only to "a body part unrelated to that reflected in the initial claim for benefits" and concluded Shawley did not apply to this case because it did not involve "injuries to two separate body parts."

To begin with, we question whether the commission meant its reasoning to be taken literally. That is, we think it unlikely the commission was truly unwilling to recognize the left shoulder and the C5-6 facet joint as "two separate body parts." Obviously they are, from the perspective of both physicians and laymen. Nor can we accept that a left shoulder bruise is anatomically the same as a cervical spine injury. What we understand the commission to be saying is that, while not the same, they are close enough to pass the Shawley specificity standard.

We cannot concur with the commission's reasoning. The timely claim in Shawley included an allegation of injury to the "right hip," whereas the untimely claim included the "back" and "right leg" among the injured body parts. Shawley, 216 Va. at 443-44, 219 S.E.2d at 851. We discern no principled basis, in law or in fact, for the commission to assert that the right hip is unrelated to either the back or the right leg (thus not close enough to excuse the time bar in Shawley), but the left shoulder is related to the neck (thus close enough to excuse the time bar in Southers's case). This ad hoc distinction is no distinction at all, much less one to which our judicial imprimatur can be given.

In reply, Southers says this discursive legal debate over claim-filing principles should be subordinated to a more important factual point: Unlike the employer in Shawley, Southers's employer had "notice of a possible neck injury" because medical records mention she complained of neck pain prior to the expiration of the statutory deadline. See Appellee's Brief at 16. That is dispositive, she continues, because Shawley declared notice to be the "compelling" public policy rationale underlying the statutory filing requirement. Shawley, 216 Va. at 446, 219 S.E.2d at 853. From these two observations, Southers concludes that the statutory filing requirement does not apply to any case (including hers) where the employer had notice of the unfiled, untimely claim.

We believe this misreading of Shawley leads to a non sequitur—one which, if accepted, would distort long-accepted principles governing statutes of limitation. The observation in Shawley about the employer's lack of notice was meant to illustrate the animating public policy behind the statute, not to atomize it into a case-by-case adjudication of notice. No published opinion of a Virginia court has ever interpreted Shawley to empower the commission to decide, by looking at the facts of each disputed claim, whether the statutory bar really advances its underlying notice policies and, if not, selectively suspend its application. "In the long run, experience teaches that strict adherence to the procedural requirements specified by the legislature is the best guarantee of evenhanded administration of the law." Hallstrom v. Tillamook County, 493 U.S. 20, 31, 110 S.Ct. 304, 311, 107 L.Ed.2d 237 (1989) (citation omitted). No matter its view of the wisdom of applying filing deadlines to a given case, neither a court nor a commission can "disregard these requirements at its discretion." Id.

To accept Southers's argument would be to employ the long-discredited "inherent equity" doctrine to judicially...