APPEALS - NOTICE OF APPEAL. Substantial evidence supports the compensation judge’s finding that the employee failed to prove that his notice of appeal was timely filed under the requirements of Minn. Stat. §§ 176.421 and 176.275.
Determined by:
Deborah K. Sundquist, Judge
David A. Stofferahn, Judge
Gary M. Hall, Judge
Compensation Judge: Sandra J. Grove
Attorneys: William J. Krueger, William J. Krueger, P.A., New Brighton, Minnesota, for the Appellant. Richard C. Pranke, Kelly R. Rodieck & Assocs., St. Paul, MInnesota, for the Respondents.
Affirmed.
Motion to permit appeal denied.
DEBORAH K. SUNDQUIST, Judge
Where the employee’s notice of appeal of the compensation judge’s May 14, 2015, Findings and Order was mailed to the Department of Labor and Industry and was date stamped at the Office of Administrative Hearings four days after the notice of appeal was due, substantial evidence supports the compensation judge’s finding that the employee failed to meet his burden of proof that the notice of appeal was timely filed. We affirm that finding. We therefore deny the employee’s motion to permit the appeal of the May 14, 2015, Findings and Order and dismiss the appeal.
On July 18, 2015, Michael J. Cobb, the employee, injured his neck and right shoulder while working for Continental Hydraulics, the employer, which was insured for workers’ compensation liability by Travelers Insurance Company. At a hearing on April 13, 2015, the parties litigated various issues. Compensation Judge J. Sandra Grove issued a Findings and Order on May 14, 2015. That findings and order included a paragraph stating that an appeal must be filed with the Chief Administrative Law Judge at P.O. Box 64620, St. Paul, Minnesota 55164-0620.
The employee sought to appeal the compensation judge’s findings and order, and claimed to have mailed a notice of appeal to the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and to the employer and insurer on June 5, 2015. The 30-day appeal period ended on June 15, 2015, which was the day that the employer and insurer received their copy of the notice of appeal. The notice of appeal was stamped as received at OAH on June 19, 2015. OAH sent an acknowledgement letter, dated June 29, 2015, to the employee indicating that his appeal had been filed on June 19, 2015, and that the 30-day appeal period had expired on June 15, 2015, resulting in an untimely appeal.
On July 14, 2015, the employee filed a motion to permit the appeal. The employee claimed that the notice must have been received at OAH by June 15, 2015, but had not been timely stamped. By order served and filed August 11, 2015, this court referred the matter to OAH for findings on whether the employee’s notice of appeal had been timely filed. After a hearing held on October 2, 2015, the compensation judge found that the employee had failed to prove that the notice was timely filed in Findings and Order served and filed on October 19, 2015. The employee appeals the findings and order on referral.
On appeal, the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals must determine whether “the findings of fact and order [are] clearly erroneous and unsupported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted.” Minn. Stat. § 176.421, subd. 1(3). Substantial evidence supports the findings if, in the context of the entire record, “they are supported by evidence that a reasonable mind might accept as adequate.” Hengemuhle v. Long Prairie Jaycees, 358 N.W.2d 54, 59, 37 W.C.D. 235, 239 (Minn. 1984). Where evidence conflicts or more than one inference may reasonably be drawn from the evidence, the findings are to be affirmed. Id. at 60, 37 W.C.D. at 240. Similarly, findings of fact should not be disturbed, even though the reviewing court might disagree with them, “unless they are clearly erroneous in the sense that they are manifestly contrary to the weight of evidence or not reasonably supported by the evidence as a whole.” Northern States Power Co. v. Lyon Food Prods., Inc., 304 Minn. 196, 201, 229 N.W.2d 521, 524 (1975).
A decision which rests upon the application of a statute or rule to essentially undisputed facts generally involves a question of law which the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals may consider de novo. Krovchuk v. Koch Oil Refinery, 48 W.C.D. 607, 608 (W.C.C.A. 1993), summarily aff’d (Minn. June 3, 1993).
The employee attempted to appeal the compensation judge’s May 14, 2015, findings and order. In order to perfect an appeal to this court, an appellant must comply with the requirements of Minn. Stat. § 176.421, subd. 4, which provides in part that within the 30-day period for taking an appeal, the appellant shall:
(1) serve a copy of the notice of appeal on each adverse party; and
(2) file the original notice, with proof of service by admission or affidavit, with the chief administrative law judge and file a copy with the commissioner. Alternatively, the original may be retained by the filing party and a copy of the original filed by facsimile with the chief administrative law judge and the commissioner. Facsimile filings must be 15 pages or less in length. A facsimile appeal received after 4:30 p.m. on a state business day is considered filed on the next state business day.
“Filed” is defined under Minn. R. 9800.0100, subp. 6, as “the receipt and stamping of a document by the court, division, or office, in conformity with Minnesota Statutes, section 176.275.” That statute provides in part:
If a document is required to be filed by this chapter or any rules adopted pursuant to authority granted by this chapter, the filing shall be completed by the receipt of the document at the division, department, office, or the court of appeals. The division, department, office, and the court of appeals shall accept any document which has been delivered to it for legal filing . . . .
A notice or other document required to be served or filed at either the department, the office, or the court of appeals which is inadvertently served or filed at the wrong one of these agencies shall be deemed to have been served or filed with the proper agency. The receiving agency shall note the date of receipt of a document and shall forward the documents to the proper agency no later than two working days following receipt.
Minn. Stat. § 176.275, subd. 1.
At the hearing on October 2, 2015, the parties stipulated that the 30-day appeal period for the May 14, 2015, findings and order had expired on June 15, 2015, and that the employer and insurer were served with their copy of the notice of appeal on or before June 15, 2015. The employee asserted that the notice of appeal form prepared by the Department of Labor and Industry (DOLI), which he had used for his notice, had the wrong post office box listed in the caption at the top of the form. The form had the post office box for DOLI (64221), but had the zip code and telephone number for the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). The correct post office box number for OAH is 64620. In the affidavit of service part of the form, there was a preprinted section indicating that the notice of appeal was being served on the commissioner at DOLI with the 64221 post office box number. There was also a preprinted section at the bottom of that page with the correct box number in the address for OAH.
When the employee’s attorney signed and mailed the affidavit of service with the notice of appeal, he addressed the document using the 64221 post office box number for DOLI and the zip code for OAH. OAH is located in St. Paul in the Harold Stassen building, the same building as the Department of Revenue. The mail for OAH is picked up at the post office by a service each morning and delivered to the Department of Revenue mail room, where it is placed in a bin for OAH. An OAH employee picks up the mail at approximately 7:30 a.m. It is then opened at OAH and stamped as received. The employee’s attorney contacted the commissioner’s office at DOLI during the hearing and reported that he was told that when DOLI receives mail addressed to OAH, it is not scanned, but is forwarded to OAH through inter-office mail.
The employee argues that the error on the notice of appeal form was misleading and that “the State should be estopped here as the Appellant relied to his (apparent) detriment on the State created form which is required to be used and can only be acquired from the OAH web site.” (Employee’s Brief at 8.) The use of the form, however, is not required for the notice of appeal filing. Minn. Stat. § 176.421, subd. 3.[1] There was a preprinted section at the bottom of the form indicating the address for OAH with the correct box number. In addition, the May 14, 2015, findings and order included a paragraph stating that an appeal must be filed with the Chief Administrative Law Judge with the correct address.
The compensation judge noted that Minn. Stat. § 176.275, subd. 1, provides that “[t]he division, department, office, and the court of appeals shall accept any document which has been delivered to it for legal filing . . . .” The judge noted that the notice of appeal had been stamped as received at OAH on June 19, 2015, at 10:55 a.m. Given that OAH’s mail from the post office is collected from the Department of Revenue mail room daily at 7:30 a.m., the judge inferred that the notice was most likely not part of a normal mail delivery from the post office through the delivery service. The judge concluded that the employee had mailed the notice to DOLI, the notice was delivered to DOLI, and the notice received by DOLI and rerouted to OAH through interoffice mail. The judge determined that the employee had therefore filed the notice of appeal at DOLI and concluded that such a filing would be considered complete by receipt of the document at DOLI under Minn. Stat. § 176.275, subd. 1, since it would “be deemed to have been served or filed with the proper agency.”
The judge then addressed whether the employee had shown that the notice of appeal was timely filed at DOLI. There is no direct evidence of the date the document was received by DOLI. The date of receipt of the document at DOLI was not noted as required by the statute since the document was not date stamped or imaged there. The employee, however, has the burden of proving that the notice of appeal was timely filed. See Kovensky v. Larry’s Autos Unlimited, 72 W.C.D. 273, 277 (W.C.C.A. 2011), summarily aff’d (Minn. May 16, 2012). The employee argues that DOLI must have received the notice on the same day that the employer and insurer received their copy of the notice, which was June 15, asserting that it was more likely than not that letters mailed from the same place both going to locations in downtown St. Paul would get there on the same day. The compensation judge did not accept the employee’s argument. The judge pointed out that while there was an apparent delay in processing the mail by the postal service in this instance, there was no evidence as to the cause of the delay or whether the delay would affect both notices, which were mailed to different zip codes, in the same way.
The judge concluded that the employee did not meet the burden of proving that DOLI received the notice on or before June 15. Under Minn. Stat. § 176.275, subd. 1, DOLI was required to forward the misfiled document to the correct agency “no later than two working days following receipt” of the document. The compensation judge noted that there was no evidence about the length of the forwarding process, but reasonably inferred from the two-day forwarding requirement that DOLI had received the document no sooner than June 17, 2015, two working days before it was received at OAH, which was two days after the appeal period had expired. Substantial evidence supports the compensation judge’s finding that the employee failed to prove that the notice of appeal from the May 14, 2015, findings and order was timely filed, and we affirm that finding.
The service and filing requirements for a notice of appeal are jurisdictional. Carpenter v. Woodvale, Inc., 400 N.W.2d 727, 728, 39 W.C.D. 430, 432 (Minn. 1987) (citing Kearns v. Julette Originals Dress Co., 267 Minn. 278, 282, 126 W.C.D. 266, 269, 23 W.C.D. 127, 131 (1964)). This court has no authority to consider the merits of an appeal in the absence of proper and timely filing. As a result of the untimely finding of the employee’s notice of appeal from the Findings and Order served and filed May 14, 2015, this court lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of that appeal. The motion to permit that appeal is denied, and the appeal is dismissed.