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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
Nos. 24-AA-1000 & 24-AA-2024
TERESA CRUTCHFIELD, PETITIONER,
V.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, RESPONDENT,
and
CAROLYN BOONE LEWIS HEALTH CENTER
and
AIG CLAIMS SERVICES,
INTERVENORS/CROSS-PETITIONERS.
On Petitions for Review of an Order of the
District of Columbia Department of Employment Services
Compensation Review Board
(2024-CRB-000034)
(Argued December 16, 2025 Decided September 10, 2026)
Brandon Hancock, with whom William J. Lightfoot was on the brief, for petitioner.
Graham E. Phillips, Deputy Solicitor General, with whom Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Carolyn S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, and Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, filed a Statement in Lieu of Brief, for respondent.
2
Jillian M. Petrella for intervenors/cross-petitioners.
Benjamin E. Douglas filed a brief on behalf of Teamsters Local 639 as amicus curiae.
David J. Kapson and Kevin H. Stillman filed a brief on behalf of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. as amicus curiae.
Mark H. Dho filed a brief on behalf of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority as amicus curiae.
Matthew E. Fioravante filed a brief on behalf of the Association of Compensation Insurance Attorneys as amicus curiae.
Before BLACKBURNE-RIGSBY, Chief Judge, HOWARD, Associate Judge, and GLICKMAN, Senior Judge.
Opinion for the court by Senior Judge GLICKMAN.
Dissenting Opinion by Associate Judge HOWARD at page 23.
GLICKMAN, Senior Judge: Petitioner Teresa Crutchfield is a former employee
of the Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Center (Carolyn Boone). She ceased working
there in December 2012. In 2022, almost a decade later, Ms. Crutchfield applied for
disability compensation and medical benefits under the District of Columbia
Workers’ Compensation Act, D.C. Code § 32-1501 et seq. She based this application
on an injury she had sustained while working at Carolyn Boone in 2011, for which
her employer and its insurer had provided benefits voluntarily, without an award,
until 2015. After a hearing, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) denied the
application as untimely under D.C. Code § 32-1514(a). These petitions for review
3
are from the affirmance of that denial by the Compensation Review Board (CRB).
For the following reasons, we uphold the CRB’s determination. Our decision renders
it unnecessary for us to consider the alternative grounds for upholding that
determination proffered by intervenors.
I.
We consider the facts material to these review petitions, as found by the ALJ
and accepted by the CRB, not to be in serious dispute. In summary, Ms. Crutchfield
was employed by Carolyn Boone as a certified nursing assistant. On March 18, 2011,
she sustained a work-related injury to her lower back while lifting a large patient to
help him move between a shower bed and a regular bed. Carolyn Boone filed a
timely report of Ms. Crutchfield’s injury six days later. On November 8, 2011, Ms.
Crutchfield filed a claim for workers’ compensation benefits with the Department of
Employment Services Office of Workers’ Compensation (OWC). Up to this point,
Carolyn Boone had paid Ms. Crutchfield disability compensation and medical
benefits voluntarily, and it continued to do so after she filed her November 2011
claim. Because Carolyn Boone did not dispute Ms. Crutchfield’s entitlement to those
benefits, no hearing was held to establish her right to them and no formal award was
made.
4
Ms. Crutchfield received medical care for her back injury, participated in
physical therapy, and underwent employer-arranged independent medical
evaluations (IMEs). In August 2012, a physician who performed what was then the
most recent IME opined that Ms. Crutchfield could return to full-time sedentary
“light duty” subject to restrictions on activity involving bending, climbing, and
lifting more than twenty-five pounds. Carolyn Boone offered Ms. Crutchfield what
was supposed to be a full-time light duty assignment that complied with the
recommended restrictions, and she returned to work. However, as the ALJ
subsequently found, Ms. Crutchfield’s new position was not consistent with those
restrictions, for it required her, among other things, to carry large boxes weighing
more than twenty-five pounds up and down staircases several times a day.
Ms. Crutchfield complained to Carolyn Boone’s human resources department
that her duties were causing her significant back pain, but she was told she had to
continue in the position she had been assigned. Not long afterward, she suffered a
fall at work while carrying boxes down the stairs. That was Ms. Crutchfield’s last
day on the job; in September 2012, her treating orthopedic surgeon took her off work
for medical reasons, stating that “there is no light duty job so [Ms. Crutchfield] will
not be working at this stage.”
5
Three months later, on December 13, 2012, Carolyn Boone sent Ms.
Crutchfield a letter again offering her full-time, sedentary “light duty work.” The
letter specified that this work would be compliant with the restrictions on her
physical activity called for in her IME. Ms. Crutchfield declined the offer, however.
Consequently, on December 21, 2012, Carolyn Boone issued a Notice of Final
Payment of Compensation Payments and a Notice of Controversion. These notices
stated that Carolyn Boone was ending Ms. Crutchfield’s workers’ compensation
payments as of December 20, 2012, based on her failure to return to work in the light
duty position she had been offered. 1
From the date of her injury in 2011 until the Notice of Final Payment, Ms.
Crutchfield received $34,011.92 in temporary total disability (TTD) compensation.
She has received no additional wage-loss payments. The Controversion Notice
advised Ms. Crutchfield that if she disagreed with the denial of further
compensation, she could apply for a hearing before the OWC and, in the interim, she
could participate in an informal conference with a claims examiner to explore
1
See D.C. Code § 32-1508(3)((V)(iii) (stating, in pertinent part, that “[i]f the employee voluntarily limits his or her income or fails to accept employment commensurate with the employee’s abilities, the employee’s wages after the employee becomes disabled shall be deemed to be the amount the employee would earn if the employee did not voluntarily limit his or her income or did accept employment commensurate with the employee’s abilities.”).
6
whether the disagreement could be resolved. Ms. Crutchfield, who was represented
by counsel, requested and attended such a conference in February 2013. The
examiner reportedly issued a memorandum of informal conference in April 2013.
That memorandum is not in the administrative record on appeal, but Ms.
Crutchfield’s brief to this court states (and Carolyn Boone does not dispute) that the
examiner found her to be entitled to the continuation of the temporary total disability
benefits she had been receiving. Carolyn Boone did not accede to this recommended
resolution, however.
Ms. Crutchfield then reportedly requested a formal hearing on the cutoff of
her disability compensation. (We have not found this request in the administrative
record on appeal.) However, for reasons that have not been elucidated in the record,
and that are now said by the parties to this appeal to be unknown, a formal hearing
to adjudicate Ms. Crutchfield’s entitlement to a resumption of disability
compensation was never scheduled. 2 All we know is that, for the next several years,
Ms. Crutchfield herself did not pursue and apparently abandoned any challenge at
all to the cutoff of her disability compensation; she did nothing to assert a claim or
2
We note that, in his subsequent decision in this case, the ALJ stated that the administrative records “did not reveal a file or documentation regarding the outcome of Claimant’s request for a formal hearing [which] therefore . . . is unknown to the undersigned.”
7
request of any kind, or otherwise trigger the adjudication necessary for a resumption
of her compensation. Ms. Crutchfield has never explained why she took no action;
she has not claimed, for example, to have been waiting patiently all these years,
expecting that a hearing on her 2013 request eventually would be scheduled, or to
have been prevented by extraneous circumstances from pressing a claim. To all
appearances, Ms. Crutchfield simply accepted the December 2012 cutoff of her total
disability wage loss compensation.
After that cutoff, Carolyn Boone’s insurer continued to pay for at least some
of the ongoing medical care that Ms. Crutchfield evidently still needed for her
disabled condition. But the insurer stopped providing medical benefits after it
obtained another IME on March 3, 2015. Dr. Matthew Ammerman, the non-treating
orthopedic surgeon who performed that IME, opined that Ms. Crutchfield’s two
prior surgeries had not improved her condition, that she would not benefit from any
further surgeries or other medical interventions (such as injections), and that she had
achieved maximum medical improvement. Dr. Ammerman also concluded that Ms.
Crutchfield was “capable of gainful employment in a sedentary type capacity” such
as answering telephones and doing computer work. It appears that Ms. Crutchfield
did not voice any objection to the stoppage of her medical benefits in 2015 or for
several years thereafter.
8
In the years following this 2015 assessment, Ms. Crutchfield underwent two
additional back surgeries, but she did not resume consistent gainful employment.
Nor, for several years, did Ms. Crutchfield pursue her earlier request for a hearing,
file a claim, or otherwise seek the resumption of any of her terminated workers’
compensation benefits.
But in 2022, Ms. Crutchfield (represented by new counsel) asserted a claim
for payment of total disability wage loss compensation for the preceding ten years
(from the date her compensation was terminated in December 2012) and continuing
thereafter, and for the unreimbursed medical expenses she had incurred on account
of her work injury in the nearly eight years following the March 2015 cessation of
medical benefits. In response, Carolyn Boone filed an Application for a Formal
Hearing on the issues raised by Ms. Crutchfield’s request, specifically including the
issue of whether it was barred by the relevant statute of limitations.
By this time, Carolyn Boone had gone out of business, but its insurer arranged
for an updated IME, which was performed by Dr. Louis Levitt, an orthopedic
surgeon, in February 2023. Dr. Levitt seconded Dr. Ammerman’s earlier conclusions
that Ms. Crutchfield had reached maximum medical improvement and that she had
the capacity to return to work in a sedentary job. Dr. Levitt concluded that “[s]he
can sit to perform work tasks with lifting not to exceed 25-30 lbs[.] [A]nd she should
9
have opportunities almost every hour to stand and stretch. She is not totally disabled
from gainful employment.”
In 2024, after an evidentiary hearing, an ALJ in OWC’s Administrative
Hearings Division entered a compensation order denying Ms. Crutchfield’s new
benefit claims. 3 The ALJ held that these new claims were untimely under D.C. Code
§ 32-1505(b), a section of the Workers’ Compensation Act providing that “[a]n
injured employee shall have up to 3 years after termination of nonscheduled benefits
to re-open his or her case due to changes in condition.” The ALJ found that Ms.
Crutchfield had waited “more than 10 years to re-open her case after her last payment
of benefits and 8 years after her last payment of medical expenses.” 4
On review, the CRB agreed that Ms. Crutchfield’s claims for restoration of
disability compensation and medical benefits were untimely, albeit on a different
statutory ground from that on which the ALJ relied. 5 The CRB held that Section
Crutchfield v. Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Ctr., AHD No. 23-004, 2024 DC
3
Wrk. Comp. LEXIS 99 (May 9, 2024).
4
The ALJ did not address whether the requirement of a timely claim was satisfied by Ms. Crutchfield’s seemingly abandoned request in 2013 for an administrative hearing on Carolyn Boone’s termination of her compensation payments. Ms. Crutchfield did not advance (and thus seemingly waived) such a contention.
Crutchfield v. Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Ctr., CRB No. 24-034, 2024 DC
5
Wrk. Comp. LEXIS 176 (October 11, 2024).
10
32‑1505(b) did not apply in this case because Ms. Crutchfield did not base her claim
on a change in her condition; rather, she consistently had maintained that she was
and remained totally disabled. 6
The CRB held that Ms. Crutchfield’s claim was governed, instead, by D.C.
Code § 32-1514(a), a provision that (the CRB said) “includes a period of limitations
for new claims for benefits” and “requires a claimant to file a new claim for
compensation benefits within one year from when the claimant was aware, or should
have been aware, of the injury” (or other occurrence) that is the basis for the new
claim. The one-year limitation barred the claims that Ms. Crutchfield asserted in
2022, the CRB explained, because Ms. Crutchfield “is not alleging she is disabled
from a new injury,” but rather that “the same injury has, in her view, resulted in a
new claim”—one for the payments that her employer and its insurer had withheld
from December 2012 onward. Accordingly, the CRB concluded, Section 32-1514(a)
required Ms. Crutchfield to “file[] her request for additional benefits within one year
of the date of the last payment” of compensation—i.e., by December 2013, a
6
Because Ms. Crutchfield’s position is that she was totally disabled from the outset and remained so, we apprehend no reason to disagree with the CRB’s determination that Section 32-1505(b) is inapplicable to Ms. Crutchfield’s present claims; but if we were to conclude that Section 32-1505(b) somehow did apply to her present claims, we still would see no reason to reject the ALJ’s conclusion that those claims are time-barred under the three-year limitations period specified in that section of the Workers’ Compensation Act.
11
requirement she had failed to meet. 7 In a concurring opinion, two of the three
administrative appeals judges on the CRB panel summarized the ruling on the
applicability of Section 32-1514 as follows:
Ms. Crutchfield’s claim is barred by § 32-1514. She seeks
benefits for a longstanding, permanent, and total disability
because of the original workplace injury. She was aware
of the relationship between her alleged disability and her
employment since it occurred. Thus, under § 32-1514, Ms.
Crutchfield should have filed her request for additional
benefits within one year of the date of the last payment,
which was December 14, 2012. She did not. Her claim is
barred.
The CRB did not specifically address the portion of Ms. Crutchfield’s claim
relating to the subsequent termination of her medical benefits in March 2015, but it
affirmed the ALJ’s ruling that this part of her claim too was time-barred since it was
not filed until several years afterward. This appeal followed.
II.
Our standard of review of the CRB’s decision in a workers’ compensation
appeal is governed by the District of Columbia’s Administrative Procedure Act. 8 In
accordance with the APA, “we will affirm the ruling unless it is arbitrary, capricious,
7
Like the ALJ, the CRB did not consider whether Ms. Crutchfield’s
unpursued request for an administrative hearing in 2013 satisfied the timeliness requirement of Section 32-1514(a), presumably because she made no such argument to the CRB.
8
See D.C. Code § 32-1522(b)(3).
12
or otherwise an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.” 9 We defer to
the factual findings on which the CRB’s decision rests so long as they are supported
by substantial evidence in the record. 10 As for our review of the CRB’s legal rulings,
this court summarized the governing principles in Fluellyn as follows:
We review the CRB’s legal rulings de novo,
recognizing that this court is the final authority on issues
of statutory construction. Recognizing agency expertise,
however, we accord great weight to any reasonable
construction of a statute by the agency charged with its
administration. We will sustain the agency’s interpretation
even if a petitioner advances another reasonable
interpretation of the statute or if we might have been
persuaded by the alternate interpretation had we been
construing the statute in the first instance. Yet, on the other
hand, we will not affirm an administrative determination
that reflects a misconception of the relevant law or a faulty
application of the law.[11]
We also have said that “[t]his court follows the principle that workers’
compensation statutes should be liberally construed to achieve their humanitarian
purpose,” which is “to provide financial and medical benefits to employees injured
9
Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 992 A.2d 1276, 1280 (D.C. 2010) (citation modified); see D.C. Code § 2‑510(a)(3)(A).
10
Fluellyn v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 54 A.3d 1156, 1160 (D.C. 2012); see D.C. Code § 2-510(a)(3)(E).
11
Fluellyn, 54 A.3d at 1160 (quotation marks and citations omitted).
13
in work-related incidents.” 12 But “[w]hile that principle allows doubts to be resolved
favorably to the employee, it does not relieve the courts of the obligation to apply
the law as it is written and in accordance with its plain meaning.” 13
In 2025, the D.C. Council amended Section 2-510 of the Administrative
Procedure Act to add new subsection (c). It provides, inter alia, that
[i]n reviewing an order or decision of an agency in any
court or administrative proceeding, . . . the reviewing
tribunal shall defer to the agency’s reasonable
interpretation of a statute or rule it administers, when the
statute or rule is silent or ambiguous with respect to a
specific issue; provided, that the interpretation is not
plainly wrong or inconsistent with either the statute’s or
rule’s language or the legislature’s or agency’s intent.[14]
This court has yet to address whether or to what extent the language of Section 2-510(c) deviates from what we said in Fluellyn. Moreover, questions have been raised
in past appeals as to whether Section 2-510(c)’s requirement of deferential review is
constitutional and consistent with the Home Rule Act, 15 and as to whether the CRB
12
McCamey v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 947 A.2d 1191, 1197 (D.C. 2008) (en banc) (quotation marks and citations omitted).
13
National Geographic Society v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 721 A.2d 618, 622 (D.C. 1998).
14
D.C. Code § 2-510(c); see D.C. Law 26-37, §2, 72 D.C. Reg. 8154 (2025).
15
See LHL Realty Co. DC LLC v. District of Columbia, 357 A.3d 1165, 1171 (D.C. 2026).
14
in particular is entitled to any special deference on our part to its interpretation of
the Workers’ Compensation Act. 16 This court has yet to provide definitive answers
to those questions; in the cited cases, we found it unnecessary to answer them
because we agreed with the agency rulings even without according deference.
So too here. “We need not address” the issue of deference in this appeal
“because we agree with the CRB’s conclusion as applied to the circumstances of this
case,” 17 i.e., the CRB’s conclusion that Ms. Crutchfield’s claim is time-barred under
D.C. Code § 32-1514(a).
III.
Section 32-1514(a) of the Workers’ Compensation Act states that
the right to compensation for disability or death under this
chapter shall be barred unless a claim therefor is filed
within 1 year after the injury or death. If payment of
compensation has been made without an award on account
of such injury or death, a claim may be filed within 1 year
after the date of the last payment. Such claim shall be filed
with the Mayor. The time for filing a claim shall not begin
to run until the employee or beneficiary is aware, or by the
exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware,
of the relationship between the injury or death and the
16
See Schwechter v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 287 A.3d 267, 269-70 (D.C. 2023). This case, however, was decided before the enactment of Section 2-510(c).
17
Id. at 270.
15
employment. Once a claim has been filed with the Mayor,
no further written claims are necessary.
The Workers’ Compensation Act does not define the term “claim” used in this
section. The regulations promulgated to implement the Act define a “claim” to mean
simply “an application for benefits made by an injured employee or his or her
beneficiary.” 18 This court accordingly has understood the term “claim” to mean
“nothing more than a simple request for compensation which triggers the process of
claim adjudication.” 19 The regulations further provide that all claims must be made
in writing, normally on a form prescribed by the Office of Workers’ Compensation.20
The term “compensation,” used in Section 32-1514(a) and elsewhere in the
Workers’ Compensation Act, is defined to mean “the money allowance payable to
an employee or to his dependents as provided for in [the Act], and includes funeral
benefits provided herein.” 21 This court and the CRB have understood the term
18
7 D.C.M.R. § 299.
19
Ferreira v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 531 A.2d 651, 659-60 (D.C. 1987); accord, Renard v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 673 A.2d 1274, 1277 n.4 (D.C. 1996).
20
7 D.C.M.R. §§ 202.1, 207.1, 299.
21
D.C. Code § 32-1501(6).
16
“compensation” as used in Section 32-1514(a) to encompass payments for medical
benefits as well as wage replacement benefits. 22
By its terms, Section 32-1514(a) thus provides a one-year statute of
limitations for employees and their beneficiaries seeking workers’ compensation
benefits: “[T]he right to compensation . . . shall be barred” if a claim is not filed
within one year after the injury or death, provided that if the employer has voluntarily
paid compensation without an award (as in the present case), “a claim may be filed
within 1 year after the date of the last payment.” 23 An employee who fails to lodge
a timely claim for benefits—including (as is pertinent here) a timely claim
challenging the cessation of voluntary payments without an award—forfeits the
claim; it will not be adjudicated on the merits. The CRB and this court have
22
See Anderson v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 303 A.3d 370, 374 (D.C. 2023) (“[T]he word ‘compensation’ as used throughout the Workers’ Compensation Act is variable and ‘context-specific,’ and [] it may or may not encompass medical benefits depending on the particular statutory provision in question.” (footnotes omitted)). The Act addresses the obligation of employers to provide medical benefits to disabled employees in D.C. Code § 32-1507, and D.C. Code § 32-1505(a) refers to such benefits as encompassed in the obligation to furnish compensation (“No compensation shall be allowed for the first 3 days of the disability, except the benefits provided for in § 32-1507….”).
23
Section 32-1514(a) further provides that “[t]he time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee or beneficiary is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury or death and the employment.” In this case, it is undisputed that Ms. Crutchfield was aware from the outset and at all relevant times of the relationship between her back injury and her employment.
17
concurred that the purpose of this statute of limitations is “to protect the employer
from stale claims and to provide finality by setting a definitive endpoint to claims.” 24
The last sentence of Section 32-1514(a) provides that “[o]nce a claim has been
filed . . . no further written claims are necessary.” This court has explained this
sentence to mean that “any questions that arise throughout the course of a case, after
a claim has been filed under [Section 32-1514(a)], do not constitute new and separate
‘claims for compensation,’ but are simply different issues that must be addressed
24
Anderson, 303 A.3d at 375 (citing intervenors in that case). As the Supreme Court has explained:
Statutes of limitation, like the equitable doctrine of laches,
in their conclusive effects are designed to promote justice
by preventing surprises through the revival of claims that
have been allowed to slumber until evidence has been lost,
memories have faded, and witnesses have disappeared.
The theory is that even if one has a just claim it is unjust
not to put the adversary on notice to defend within the
period of limitation and that the right to be free of stale
claims in time comes to prevail over the right to prosecute
them.
Order of R. Telegraphers v. Ry. Express Agency, Inc., 321 U.S. 342, 348-349 (1944); see also United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 117 (1979) (explaining that statutes of limitation “protect defendants and the courts from having to deal with cases in which the search for truth may be seriously impaired by the loss of evidence, whether by death or disappearance of witnesses, fading memories, disappearance of documents, or otherwise”).
18
with respect to an employee's claim.” 25 In other words, if a timely filed claim has
triggered a still-pending adjudication, the employee need not file a new written claim
in order to modify that claim or raise issues relating to it during that adjudication.
But if a filed claim is no longer pending adjudication, or if it was resolved without
an adjudication, an employee who wishes to reopen her case to request additional
workers’ compensation benefits must, of necessity, file a new claim in order to have
25
C&P Tel. Co. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 638 A.2d 690, 696 (D.C. 1994) (emphasis added). We are not aware of any decision of the Compensation Review Board explaining the last sentence of Section 32-1514(a). It does not appear in the counterpart section of the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Act, 33 U.S.C. § 913(a), from which Section 32-1514(a) was derived virtually verbatim, and the legislative history of our Act does not explain the addition of this sentence in our Act. See Report on Bill No. 3-106 before the Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs, Council of the District of Columbia, Statement of Wilhelmina J. Rolark, Chairperson at 14 (Jan. 16, 1980).
19
it adjudicated, since under those circumstances there will not be an adjudication in
the absence of a request for it; and the new claim must be timely. 26
We therefore are persuaded that the CRB correctly held that Ms. Crutchfield’s
claim in 2022 for a resumption of her workers’ compensation benefits was barred by
the applicable statute of limitations, Section 32-1514(a). When the employer has
voluntarily paid compensation without an award, but then decides to discontinue
paying it, the employee is put to a choice. She may acquiesce in the cessation, in
which case adjudication is at an end, or she may file a timely claim for the
resumption of her compensation and trigger the necessary adjudication (an
26
Amicus curiae supporting Ms. Crutchfield have called our attention to Combs v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 983 A.2d 1004 (D.C. 2009). There this court opined in dicta that an employee who had made a claim for temporary total disability benefits within a year of his 1991 workplace accident would not have been “precluded from requesting compensation for [temporary partial disability attributable to that accident] in 2003” (which the employee had not done). Id. at 1011 n.6. This aside was superfluous to the court’s opinion and hence is nonbinding, and the court left its underlying rationale unclear at best. In support of it, the court cited only our decision in Capitol Hill Hosp. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 726 A.2d 682, 684-86 (D.C. 1999). That case is not on point here, however—for one reason, because it addressed the one-year limitations period in a different statute, which is now codified as D.C. Code § 32-1524(a). That section of the Workers’ Compensation Act provides a one-year period in which a party may seek modification of an award based on a subsequent material change of conditions. The parties before us agree that Section 32-1524(a) is inapplicable in the present case because Ms. Crutchfield did not seek to modify an existing compensation order based on a change of conditions; and the CRB specifically agreed with them on the inapplicability of Section 32-1524(a). We do not view the Combs dicta as informative with respect to the proper interpretation of Section 32-1514(a).
20
adjudication that would not happen without such a timely new claim). It is
appropriate to afford the employee a reasonable time in which to make that choice
after the employer has stopped payments, but at some point, prolonged silence and
inaction by the employee is reasonably understood and treated as acquiescence or
forfeiture. Thus, as a matter of fairness to both employers and employees, Section
32-1514(a) grants the employee a full year from the date of the last payment in which
to decide whether to accept or challenge the employer’s cessation of benefits. 27
Accordingly, Ms. Crutchfield had one year in which to file a claim for her wage loss
benefits after Carolyn Boone ceased paying them voluntarily in 2012, and one year
in which to file a claim for her medical benefits after those were cut off in 2015. The
claim for the reinstatement of benefits that Ms. Crutchfield filed in 2022 was not
close to timely.
Ms. Crutchfield argues that she did file a timely claim for benefits a decade
earlier, in November 2011. But that claim did not trigger any adjudication because,
by that point, Carolyn Boone had acknowledged Ms. Crutchfield’s work-related
disability and was voluntarily providing the benefits Ms. Crutchfield sought in
27
In some cases, this period may be extended because Section 32-1514(a) provides that “[t]he time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee . . . is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury . . . and the employment.” This proviso is not applicable in the present case.
21
November 2011. Since Carolyn Boone was providing benefits for Ms. Crutchfield’s
claim at the time, no adjudication was called for. Moreover, Ms. Crutchfield’s
November 2011 claim could not have been understood to challenge Carolyn Boone’s
cessation of her wage loss compensation a year later, in December 2012, or its
cessation of her medical benefits four years later, in 2015, since the reasons for those
decisions had not yet arisen in November 2011. There would be no adjudication of
either termination of Ms. Crutchfield’s benefits unless she took the step of initiating
it by filing a timely claim—a request for an adjudication—within one year of each
of the terminations. 28
Thus, when Ms. Crutchfield belatedly did file a claim several years later (in
2022) for the resumption of her workers’ compensation benefits, her filing was not
28
As we have noted, it has been asserted that, in December 2013, Ms. Crutchfield did request a formal hearing on the cessation of her wage loss benefits, though there is no record of that request and no explanation in the record for her failure to pursue the putative claim. Furthermore, Ms. Crutchfield, who is represented by counsel, has not made any argument in this appeal (nor, as we have already said, in the administrative proceedings culminating in this appeal) that her request in 2013 satisfied the one-year statute of limitations. (And, consequently, her employer and its insurer have had no chance or reason to respond to such an argument.) “It is a basic principle of appellate jurisprudence that points not urged on appeal are deemed to be waived.” Rose v. United States, 629 A.2d 526, 535 (D.C. 1993); see also, e.g., Wallace v. United States, 351 A.3d 1, 1-2 (D.C. 2026); MP PPH, LLC v. District of Columbia, 339 A.3d 132, 145 (D.C. 2025). That principle applies here, and we hold that Ms. Crutchfield has waived any contention she might have made that her alleged request for a formal hearing in 2013 satisfied the oneyear statute of limitations in D.C. Code § 32-1514(a).
22
part of any pending claim adjudication. Consequently, Ms. Crutchfield’s 2022 claim
could not piggyback on the claim she had filed in 2011; and so, it was time-barred
under the one-year rule of Section 32-1514(a). The deadline for filing a claim for the
terminated wage loss compensation payments was one year after December 2012,
when Carolyn Boone ceased making those payments voluntarily (in the absence of
any compensation award). The deadline for filing a claim for the terminated medical
benefits was one year after March 2015, when Carolyn Boone’s insurer stopped
those voluntary payments (again, in the absence of an award). After March 2016,
nothing is said to have occurred that might have enabled Ms. Crutchfield to resurrect
the defunct case in 2022, such as a new adverse consequence of her previous workrelated injury. 29 Allowing her to do so anyway based on the claim she filed in 2011,
when the benefits were being provided voluntarily, would subvert the legislative
29
Cf. WMATA v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 981 A.2d 1216 (D.C. 2009). The employee in that case sought to initiate a new claim for disability benefits for a new injury arising from a work-related accident for which she previously had filed a claim. We held that “pursuant to section 32-1514, claimant had one-year, following the time she first became aware, or should have become aware, of her [new] injury, to file a new claim for compensation benefits.” Id. at 1220 (footnote omitted). Our holding recognized that an employee who acts timely may file a new claim for compensation based on new facts or circumstances even if the new claim stems from the same workplace injury as a previously adjudicated compensation claim. See also id. at 1223 n.7 (explaining that such a claimant “would be barred by the doctrine of res judicata or collateral estoppel from filing a new claim under Section 32-1514 . . . . only if claimant was aware or on notice of her subsequent injury at the time she filed her original claim for compensation benefits”).
23
goal of protecting employers from stale claims and providing finality by setting a
definite endpoint to the assertion of claims. 30 It would create a precedent for other
claimants to do exactly what Ms. Crutchfield did—wait years, even a decade or
more, before informing their employers of the claims against them. That is clearly
undesirable; in this very case, for example, the employer had gone out of business
in the interim and intervenors complain that the long delay seriously impaired their
ability to reconstruct the relevant circumstances and present testimony (concerning,
for example, the appropriateness of the light duty position that Ms. Crutchfield
refused). In short, what Ms. Crutchfield proposes is contrary to what the legislature
intended to achieve with Section 32-1514(a) and its one-year limitations period.
The compensation claims that Ms. Crutchfield filed in 2022 were time-barred.
We affirm the decision of the CRB.
So ordered.
HOWARD, Associate Judge, dissenting: The majority concludes that an injured
employee may not adjudicate the merits of their workers’ compensation claim for
benefits following the termination of their benefits unless a separate “new claim”
has been filed. Ante at 16-17. In my view, this holding is contrary to the text of the
30
Anderson, 303 A.3d at 375.
24
District’s Workers’ Compensation Act (Act), its legislative intent, and our own
precedent. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
To begin, I present a slightly alternative interpretation of Section 32-1514 to
that of the majority. Section 32-1514, the section of the Act at issue in this case,
contains two operative clauses that define the timeline for a claimant to maintain
their right to benefit entitlement under the Act. Under the first clause of Section
32‑1514(a), “the right to compensation for disability or death under [the Act] shall
be barred unless a claim therefor is filed within 1 year after the injury or death.”
Alternatively, under the second clause, “[i]f payment of compensation has been
made without an award on account of such injury or death, a claim may be filed
within 1 year after the date of the last payment.” Id. Applicable to either clause,
“[t]he time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee or beneficiary
is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the
relationship between the injury or death and the employment.” Id. Finally, and of
importance to this case, “[o]nce a claim has been filed with the Mayor, no further
written claims are necessary.” Id.
Reading the two operative clauses in context with the rest of the section
evinces that they are mutually dependent, i.e., fulfillment of the first clause relieves
the necessity to fulfill the second. One can readily discern this from the text itself
because the final sentence of the section plainly states that “[o]nce a claim has been
25
filed . . . no further written claims are necessary.” Id. Accordingly, an employee who
filed an initial claim for benefits following their work-related accident does not need
to file a second claim after their employer ceases benefits to maintain their right to
contest their benefit entitlement.
In construing Section 32-1514, the majority overrides Section 32-1514(a)’s
first clause with the alternative second, holding that “an employee who wishes to
reopen her case to request additional workers’ compensation benefits must . . . file a
new claim in order to have it adjudicated, since under those circumstances there will
not be an adjudication in the absence of a request for it.” Ante at 16-17.
The very text of the Act allows for no such interpretation in my view. As
explained, an employee may file an initial claim for benefits within one year of
suffering a work-related injury under Section 32-1514’s first clause or they may wait
to file a claim within a year following their employer’s cessation of voluntary
benefits under the second clause. The majority’s holding disregards this plain
reading and conversely interprets the Act to require a claimant to “file a new claim”
to “reopen” their workers’ compensation claim, otherwise their claim will remain
“closed” following their employer’s cessation of benefits. That rationale is not only
confusing (an employee needs to file a new claim to maintain their old claim), but it
is also contrary to the Act’s express language that once a claim has been filed, no
further written claims are necessary.
26
I believe the Council’s apparent legislative intent affirms this textual
interpretation. Section 32‑1514 was adopted by the D.C. Council in 1980 as an
original part of the Act. District of Columbia Workers’ Compensation Act of 1979,
D.C. Law 3-77, 27 D.C. Reg. 2503 (1980). In the Council’s committee report on the
Act, the Council only refers to a single claim under Section 1514, and although its
comments on the section are brief, there is no indication that multiple claims would
need to be filed under the section. See District of Columbia Workers’ Compensation
Act of 1979, Section-by-Section Analysis, D.C. Council, Report on Bill 3-106 at 14
(Jan. 16, 1980) (stating “[a] claim shall be filed within one year of injury or death,
with certain exceptions . . . . ”).
Except for the final sentence, Section 32-1514 is a near verbatim copy of the
Federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act’s provision entitled
“Filing of Claims.” 33 U.S.C. § 913(a); C&P Tel. Co. v. D.C. Dep’t Emp. Servs., 638
A.2d 690, 696 (D.C. 1994). The federal counterpart for which the District’s Act is
modeled after does not include a similar provision requiring only one claim for
workers’ compensation benefits to be filed. And yet, by the time the Council adopted
Section 32-1514, 33 U.S.C. § 913(a) had been interpreted to require only a single
filing, even when a claimant who filed an initial claim for benefits following their
injury later had their compensation payments terminated by their employer. In
Intercounty Construction Corporation v. Walter, the D.C. Circuit determined that
27
additional filings under Section 913 were not required if the claimant had filed an
initial claim and “were still awaiting an order on the filed application.” 500 F.2d 815,
819 (D.C. Cir. 1974), aff’d, 422 U.S. 1 (1975).
Thus, it stands to reason that the Council had this interpretation in mind—that
only a single timely claim is required to preserve a workers’ compensation claim,
even after an employer ceases benefits—when it modeled the District’s workers’
compensation law after its federal counterpart. That reading of the Act is all the more
likely the correct interpretation considering the Council’s deliberate decision to
include the single claim provision within the Act.
This may all be beside the point, however, because this court has already had
occasion to opine on Section 32-1514’s language in C&P Telephone Company, 638
A.2d at 690. In that case, we noted that “any questions that arise throughout the
course of a case, after a claim has been filed under [Section 32-1514], do not
constitute new and separate ‘claims for compensation,’ but are simply different
issues that must be addressed with respect to an employee’s claim.” Id. at 696.
Therefore, following C&P, a claimant’s contestation of benefits following the
termination of their benefits by their employer, but after they filed an initial claim
for compensation following their injury, does not invoke Section 32‑1514’s one-year
limitation. Rather, the claimant’s contestation is “simply [a] different issue[] that
must be addressed” within their original claim. Id. By contesting terminated benefits,
28
a claimant thereupon enters a new phase of their claim whereby they are awaiting
some finality in their dispute, which would come in the form of a Final Order, see 7
D.C.M.R. § 299 (defining Final Order as “an order . . . which formalizes the outcome
of an informal or vocational rehabilitation conference”), or Compensation Order, see
7 D.C.M.R. § 299 (defining Compensation Order as “an order of a Hearing or
Attorney Examiner . . . which rejects a claim or which makes an award of
compensation in respect of a claim under the Act”).
As I see it, Ms. Crutchfield initiated the adjudication process early on and has
since remained in limbo in the absence of a Final Order or Compensation Order. She
timely filed her initial claim for benefits in 2011 after she suffered a work injury,
satisfying Section 32‑1514. Her employer later ceased benefits, and Ms. Crutchfield
contested that cessation. In 2013, the parties attended an informal conference where,
according to Ms. Crutchfield and not disputed by Intervenors, a Memorandum of
Informal Conference was issued with the finding that Ms. Crutchfield was entitled
to temporary total disability benefits from the end of 2012 to “present and
continuing.” Evidently, Intervenors disagreed with this outcome and Ms. Crutchfield
requested a formal hearing, a fact that Intervenors do not dispute. Had Ms.
Crutchfield not requested a formal hearing, Intervenors would have needed to
dispute the Memorandum of Informal Conference, per 7 D.C.M.R. § 219.22 which
reads:
29
If an application for formal hearing is not filed in
accordance with §220 of the chapter within thirty-four
(34) working days after the issuance of the Memorandum
of Informal Conference, said Memorandum shall become
final. Thereafter, the Office shall issue a Final Order which
shall be sent by certified mail to the parties and their
representatives, and the Hearings and Adjudication
Section.
Presumably the agency received the formal request because it did not send the
Final Order as it was required to by its regulations. However, for unknown reasons,
the requested formal hearing never took place. Ms. Crutchfield then languished for
ten years, and, for reasons we simply do not know from the record, neither she nor
her employer revisited her workers’ compensation claim until 2022. These facts
show that Ms. Crutchfield initiated the adjudication process after her employer
terminated her benefits but never received finality by way of a Final Order or
Compensation Order. I am thus persuaded that her case remains ongoing and that
she is entitled to a hearing on the merits of her claim for benefits.
Rather than address the informal conference that the parties undisputedly
participated in after her employer terminated her compensation payments or the
subsequent request for a formal hearing, the majority altogether dismisses the
bearing these facts have on this case because Ms. Crutchfield “has not made any
argument in this appeal . . . that her request in 2013 satisfied the one-year statute of
limitations.” Ante at n.23. On appeal Ms. Crutchfield maintains that Section 32-1514
30
does not bar relief because the Act requires only one claim to satisfy its one-year
limitation. Ms. Crutchfield argues that she satisfied that one-year requirement by
filing her initial claim in 2011 after she suffered a work-related injury and that her
claim is ongoing. Ms. Crutchfield’s argument, in my opinion, presumes that her
request for an informal conference and formal hearing constituted a continuation of
her ongoing claim, thus it was not necessary for her to separately address why her
request for a formal hearing did or did not satisfy Section 32-1514. Accordingly, I
think we can, and should, address the adjudication that Ms. Crutchfield requested in
2013 and the finality that failed to manifest thereafter. 1
Under the specific facts of this case, the interpretation of Section 32-1514
outlined in this dissent, and following this court’s guiding principle “that workers’
1
This is not to ignore the near-decade-long gap in Ms. Crutchfield’s case. I agree that this record betrays no reason one way or the other as to why Ms. Crutchfield’s claim laid dormant so long without a formal hearing—whether agency inaction, her own, or both. Ante at 6. No factual findings were made on the matter beyond the existence of an unexplained gap which was held against Ms. Crutchfield at the agency level and by the majority as seen in how it characterizes her “wait[ing] years, even a decade or more, before informing [her] employer[] of the claims against them.” Ante at 21. As previously noted, it is not disputed that Ms. Crutchfield made a request for a formal hearing after the informal conference. In the presence of a gap in the factual record, especially where such a request was made, I would be inclined to interpret the gap against the agency, as opposed to the claimant. Factual interpretation aside, if the dormancy of the case is a material question, then the agency needs to take evidence and make findings of fact regarding the issue in the first instance.
31
compensation statutes should be liberally construed to achieve their humanitarian
purpose,” McCamey v. D.C. Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 947 A.2d 1191, 1197 (D.C. 2008)
(en banc) (citation modified) (quoting Vieira v. D.C. Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 721 A.2d
579, 584 (D.C. 1998)), I would reverse the CRB’s determination and remand so that
the merits of Ms. Crutchfield’s claim for benefits may be reviewed. Furthermore, I
would clarify that Section 32-1514 does not bar a claimant’s workers’ compensation
claim where a single claim has been timely filed, no matter if the claim was filed
before or after an employer ceased providing benefits. I would hold that once an
adjudication has been initiated, that claim remains ongoing until a Final Order or
Compensation Order has been rendered, or the case has otherwise been resolved by
the parties and they have sought dismissal. Such a holding, in my view, is in
accordance with our precedent in C&P Telephone Company and in alignment with
the interpretation of the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act,
which the Council modeled the Act after.
For at least two reasons, I do not share the majority’s concern that such a
holding would create a precedent for claimants to bring delayed claims, which they
assert Ms. Crutchfield did. Ante at 21. First, a case such as this should be exceedingly
rare. The regulations and procedures promote the active resolution and closure of
workers’ compensation cases. Ironically, Ms. Crutchfield’s request for formal
hearing became both a sword and shield against her. If she had not made the request,
32
the impetus would have been on her employer to file its own request and dispute the
Memorandum of Informal Conference it disagreed with—or the agency would be
responsible for issuing a Final Order reflecting the terms of the Memorandum of
Informal Conference. However, because Ms. Crutchfield filed a request, no such
Final Order was issued. For the reasons discussed above, it stands to reason that the
agency received Ms. Crutchfield’s request but then failed to set the formal hearing
and progress the case. While we have no record of Ms. Crutchfield taking further
action, we also have no record either of her employer pursuing finality on the
pending claim, nor of the agency adjudicating the case towards finality. I believe this
unique confluence of factors to be an exceedingly rare occurrence.
Next, routinely among administrative agencies across the District and country,
agencies take action to spur cases toward resolution. At some point over the near
decade after the request for formal hearing was made, upon noticing the case
lingering because of agency inaction, i.e. that it lacked a final order and no formal
hearing was set, the agency could have done at least one of two things. First, it could
have issued a scheduling order and put the case into gear. Alternatively, as agencies
routinely do, it could have sent a notice to inquire into whether a dispute remained
in the case and required the parties to show cause as to why the case should not be
dismissed for failure to prosecute. The agency could then take appropriate action,
including dismissing the case, under its authority to manage its docket. See Mullin
33
v. D.C. Rental Hous. Comm’n, 844 A.2d 1138, 1141 (D.C. 2004) (holding that the
administrative agency could enforce compliance with its orders by dismissal);
Ammerman v. D.C. Rental Accommodations Comm’n, 375 A.2d 1060, 1063 (D.C.
1977) (“No principle of administrative law is more firmly established than that of
agency control of its own calendar. . . . [a]gencies must be, and are, given discretion
in the procedural decisions made in carrying out their statutory mandate.”).
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.