Arizona Court of Appeals Division One holds that an ALJ’s decision concerning the nature of an underlying injury precluded a different ALJ from coming to a contrary conclusion on the nature of a claimant’s underlying injury when a claim is reopened.

A workers’ compensation claimant suffered a compensable injury in 2012 and received treatment until 2013, when the carrier closed his claim.  At the hearing contesting the closure, the ALJ heard testimony from two doctors with competing viewpoints on the underlying injury.  The ALJ adopted the opinion of one doctor.  But when the claim was again closed and the claimant protested the closure in 2015, a new ALJ adopted the opinion of the other doctor.  The claimant appealed, arguing that since the first ALJ made a decision on the claimant’s underlying injury, the second ALJ was precluded from reaching a contrary decision.

The Court of Appeals reversed the second ALJ’s decision on preclusion grounds.  It reasoned that, once the first ALJ had rejected a first doctor’s medical opinion and adopted a second doctor’s in its finding of facts, a subsequent hearing could not reject that finding and instead adopt an opinion that was more or less the same as the first doctor’s.  In so deciding, the Court of Appeals distinguished a previous case, Aguayo v. Industrial Commission, in which it rejected a preclusion argument.  In Aguayo, the Court reasoned, the ALJ had reopened a case to determine whether the underlying injury currently required treatment, not to reconsider the nature of the underlying injury itself.

Judge Winthrop delivered the unanimous opinion, in which Judges Norris and Jones concurred.