Sneed v. Associated Group Ins., 93A02-9501-EX-53

• Citation: 663 N.E.2d 789
• Decision Date: 12 April 1996
• Docket Number: No. 93A02-9501-EX-53,93A02-9501-EX-53
• Parties: Martha Jane SNEED, Appellant-Plaintiff, v. ASSOCIATED GROUP INSURANCE, Appellee-Defendant.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Indiana

Page 789

663 N.E.2d 789

Martha Jane SNEED, Appellant-Plaintiff, v. ASSOCIATED GROUP INSURANCE, Appellee-Defendant.

No. 93A02-9501-EX-53.

Court of Appeals of Indiana.

April 12, 1996.

Martha Jane Sneed, Indianapolis, pro se.

Kathleen K. Shortridge, Ice Miller Donadio & Ryan, Indianapolis, for appellee.

Appeal from the Worker's Compensation Board. Application No. C-122464.

OPINION

SULLIVAN, Judge.

Appellant Martha Jane Sneed (Sneed) seeks judicial review of the affirmance by the full Worker's Compensation Board (Board) of its hearing member's decision denying Sneed's application for benefits.

The restated issues for our review are as follows:

(1) Does this court have jurisdiction to review the Board's decision despite Sneed's failure to file an assignment of errors;

(2) Was the evidence sufficient to support the denial of Sneed's application for benefits?

We first conclude that, notwithstanding Sneed's failure to file an assignment of errors, this court has jurisdiction to review the Board's decision. Our review of the merits of that decision, however, reveals that it must be affirmed.

FACTS

On April 28, 1993, Sneed filed an application for benefits, alleging that, in May of 1991, she suffered a fall in the cafeteria of her employer, Associated Group Insurance (Associated Group). In her application, Sneed alleged that she fell in a puddle of water near the cafeteria's salad bar, landing on her right knee. Sneed alleged that she remained on the floor near the salad bar for two to five minutes, and that during that time no one assisted her. At the hearing, Sneed testified that, after getting up from the fall, she completed her lunch and returned to her job. Sneed alleged that she had suffered continuous pain in the knee since the accident.

With respect to the almost two-year span between the date of the fall and her application for benefits, Sneed stated in her application that she did not notify her employer "due to lapse of memory or amnesiatic symptoms which accompanied the fall." Record at 5. She elaborated on this at the hearing by saying that she did not associate the pain in her knee with the fall until, during a physical therapy session necessitated by an unrelated incident in 1993, a therapist asked her about any falls she had suffered. It was at that time, while recounting two other falls she had suffered in 1992, that Sneed recalled the May 1991 incident.

During the period from 1991 to 1993, Sneed suffered from a variety of physical ailments unrelated to her falls, including fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome, chronic fatigue, arthritis, and lower back pain. Over that period of time, Sneed saw a number of doctors and therapists, and accumulated a substantial body of medical documentation. Nonetheless, there did not appear to be any specific mention of the May 1991 fall to any of her doctors until subsequent to her application for worker's compensation benefits in 1993, despite the fact that her other two falls were reported to and documented by her doctors around the time they occurred. Sneed accounted for this discrepancy at the hearing by asserting that, although she "probably" mentioned the knee problem, the doctors felt it was simply another symptom of her more general physical ailments. Record at 53.

The hearing member of the Board found against Sneed. Noting the lack of medical documentation around the time of the fall, and dismissing her assertions of lapse of memory as "not credible", Record at 19, the hearing member concluded that Sneed had failed to carry her burden of showing that she had suffered an injury arising out of and in the course of her employment within the two-year statutory time frame. The hearing member further found that, even if such injury had occurred, Sneed failed to demonstrate that she had suffered any period of disability or any statutorily compensable medical expenses due to the incident. The hearing member's decision was adopted by the full Board.

DECISION

I. Jurisdiction to Review the Decision

Associated Group argues that we lack jurisdiction to review the Board's decision, because Sneed failed to file an assignment of errors, as required both by statute and by the Rules of Appellate Procedure. We conclude that our Supreme Court's recent amendments to the Rules of Appellate Procedure, which eliminate the need for such a filing, should be applied to this appeal. Thus, the fact that Sneed failed to file an assignment of errors does not deprive us of jurisdiction over this case. ¹

At the time Sneed sought to appeal the Board's decision, the filing of an assignment of errors was required both by the Rules of Appellate Procedure and the provision within the Worker's Compensation statute addressing judicial review. Noting that the requirement was "fundamental to the appellate process", ² our Supreme Court held that the failure to file an assignment of errors constituted a failure to invoke the jurisdiction of an appellate court in reviewing a denial of unemployment benefits. Claywell v. Review Bd. (1994) Ind., 643 N.E.2d 330, 331. In so holding, the court cited both the language of Ind.Appellate Rule 7.2(A)(1), which required, as a prerequisite to judicial review, "an assignment of errors for reviews from administrative decisions taken directly to the Court of Appeals under Appellate Rule 4(C)", and the provision of the unemployment compensation scheme addressing judicial review, which required that "[t]he appellant shall attach to the transcript an assignment of errors." Id. (quoting I.C. 22-4-17-12(f) (Burns Code Ed.Repl.1992)). The Supreme Court did not elaborate on the relationship between the requirement found in the appellate rule and the statutory requirement, and did not opine what effect, if any, the elimination of the appellate rule requirement would have upon the statutory requirement. Further, it appears that the cases in this court which led to the Claywell decision dealt with factual situations in which both the appellate requirement and the statutory requirement were cited as justifications for dismissing a defective appeal. ³

This court applied Claywell in dismissing an appeal from the Worker's Compensation Board where the appellant did not file an assignment of errors in Black v. Olive Garden Restaurant (1994) Ind.App., 644 N.E.2d 627. ⁴ In so doing, we did not address the relationship between the appellate rules and the statutory requirement, though Judge Staton expressed the view that it was the "failure to meet a statutory prerequisite [I.C. 22-3-4-8(d) ], not the failure to follow the rules of appellate procedure", which doomed the attempted review to dismissal. ⁵ 644 N.E.2d at 628 (opinion concurring in result).

In an Order Amending Rules of Appellate Procedure, filed December 15, 1995 ("Order"), our Supreme Court amended the appellate rules with respect to administrative agencies, to eliminate the assignment of errors requirement, effective February 1, 1996. Specifically, the Order amended App.R. 4(C), which grants this court jurisdiction to directly review decisions of certain administrative agencies. The amendment provides:

"It shall be unnecessary to file a separate assignment of errors in the Court of Appeals to assert that the decision of any board, agency, or other administrative body is contrary to law. All issues and grounds for appeal appropriately preserved before the board, agency or other administrative body may be initially addressed in the appellate brief." Order at 1.

The Order also deleted the requirement found in App.R. 7.2(A)(1) that an assignment of errors be included in the administrative agency's record of proceedings. Id. The Order did not, however, expressly discuss the assignment of errors requirement which I.C. 22-4-17-12(f) and I.C. 22-3-4-8(d) have been held to demand. Thus, since "[w]e are not free to ignore the statutory mandate that an assignment of errors be included with the appeal", Claywell v. Review Bd. (1994) Ind.App., 635 N.E.2d 181, 183, aff'd, 643 N.E.2d 330 (emphasis supplied), we must examine whether the assignment of errors requirement imposed by I.C. 22-3-4-8 is affected by the changes in the appellate rules.

In effect, the conflict is this: the Supreme Court has purported to delete the assignment of errors requirement for reviews of decisions of the Worker's Compensation Board, but the statute providing for our review of Worker's Compensation Board decisions has been consistently interpreted by both the Supreme Court and this court to require that the assignment be filed. ⁶ Further, our Supreme Court's decision in Sheets v. Disabilities Services (1992) Ind., 602 N.E.2d 506, appears to hold that the requirements of the Worker's Compensation statute govern the appellate rules with respect to jurisdictional prerequisites to judicial review.

In Sheets, the plaintiff was seeking review of a decision by the Worker's Compensation Board denying her claim for benefits. Sheets filed a praecipe within thirty days of the Board's decision, but did not file the record within thirty days; instead, she filed the record within ninety days, as permitted by the appellate rules. See App.R. 3(B). The Supreme Court rejected Sheets' claim that her compliance with the appellate rules was sufficient to preserve her appeal in the face of her lack of compliance with the more stringent statutory requirement.

The court first noted that the Worker's Compensation statute had long been interpreted as imposing the thirty-day requirement with respect to the filing of both a record and an assignment of errors. 602 N.E.2d at 506. The court also cited its own precedent stating that "the rules of appellate procedure do not apply to reviews of worker's compensation claims." Id. (citing Russell v. Johnson (1943) 220 Ind. 649, 46 N.E.2d 219). In ultimately affirming this court's dismissal of Sheets' appeal, the Supreme Court stated:

"Sheets cites recent amendments to the Indiana Rules of Appellate Procedure changing...