In a decision that stretches the bounds of legal reasoning, the Industrial Claim Appeals Office recently issued an opinion holding an Administrative Law Judge\u2019s order finding a claim not compensable did not deny the claimant a benefit. Abenth v. Northside Christian Church<\/em>, W. C. No. 4-893-024 (September 12, 2013). The court recognized that the statute permits appellate review only of decisions which award or deny benefits. The Panel then reasoned that, because the claimant did not request any specific benefit, rather requesting only a finding of \u201ccompensability\u201d, the Administrative Law Judge\u2019s order denying compensability did not deny any specific benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With such inane proclamations as \u201can order which denies all benefits when there are no benefits requested, actually denies no benefits,\u201d it becomes apparent the Panel is using the decision as a soap box to express its displeasure with \u201ctension existing throughout the statute.\u201d Regardless of the reasons for the Panel\u2019s absurd holding, workers\u2019 compensation practitioners need to be aware that proceeding to hearing on the issue of compensability only will not result in an appealable award, whether the case if found compensable or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a decision that stretches the bounds of legal reasoning, the Industrial Claim Appeals Office recently issued an opinion holding an Administrative Law Judge\u2019s order finding a claim not compensable did not deny the claimant a benefit. Abenth v. Northside Christian Church, W. C. No. 4-893-024 (September 12, 2013). The court recognized that the statute… Continue reading An Order Denying \u201cCompensability\u201d Only is Not an Appealable Order<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epicdevsite.info\/2021-picardilawfirm2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}