Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., LP v. Mitchell

in which Justice WAINWRIGHT, Justice BRISTER, Justice JOHNSON, and Justice WILLETT joined.

In Continental Casualty Co. v. Downs, we construed section 409.021(a) of the Workers’ Compensation Act1 to preclude a carrier from contesting the compensability of an employee’s injury unless, within seven days of receiving notice of injury, it either began to pay benefits or gave written notice of its refusal to do so.2 For more than a decade, the Texas Workers’ Compensation Commission, the entity then charged with carrying out the Act,3 had consistently taken the position that a carrier had sixty days…