Armstrong v. Unit Drilling

T1 In a remarkable feat of wizardry the court today transmogrifies a 1998 Workers' Compensation Court's dispositional clause (whose settled meaning stands confined to liability for pre-award medical treatment expenses)1 into an explicit judicial grant of expenses for postaward continuing healthcare maintenance. Adding insult to injury, the court utilizes a common-law doctrine of estoppel-unavailable in the trial tribunal-to impose upon the employer a public-law liability.2 I must recede from today's pronouncement.

*3872 The Workers' Compensation Court is a statutory tribunal of narrow cognizance.3…