Iowa Workers' Compensation

In Logan v. The Bon Ton Stores, Inc. , No. 19-0608 (Iowa May 1, 2020), the court addressed a recurring question of service of judicial review petitions in workers' compensation actions.  The statute, 17A.19(2), requires personal service or service by mail within ten days.  Earlier cases, including Ortiz v. Loyd Roling Construction , 928 N.W.2d 651 (Iowa 2019) had found that substantial compliance with the statute was sufficient to confer jurisdiction. In Ortiz, service had been by email and this was found to substantially comply with the statute.  The court describes  Logan  as a codicil to Ortiz . Claimant appeared pro so in this case, filed her petition for judicial review and sent the petition to opposing counsel by fax.  The court noted that defendants were not prejudiced by receipt by fax, since this was received by counsel well within the ten day limit.  Although the court noted that the golden age of faxes was well in the past (and thus unl...

In Ortiz v. Loyd Roling Construction , No. 18-0047 (Iowa May 24, 2019), the Supreme Court reversed earlier rulings that held that service of a petition for judicial review was not timely when served via email rather than regular mail.  The IAPA, section 17A.19(2), provides that it is a jurisdictional requirement for petitioner to mail a copy of the petition to all attorneys of record.  In this case, petitioner emailed a copy of the petition in a timely manner, but did not mail the petition within 10 days as required by statute.  Both the district court and court of appeals held that since the statute did not discuss the emailing of the petition service was untimely and the petition was dismissed.  The Supreme Court reverses and discusses the fact that when the statute was enacted in 1981, email was virtually unknown.  The court also notes that most discussions between attorneys in 2019 occurs via email and that there has been a change such that email is the "r...