stating that preclusive effect may be given to “necessary findings in a formal administrative adjudication if the parties had both a full opportunity and the incentive to contest the point at issue on a record that also was subject to judicial review”
How later courts described this case
- stating that preclusive effect may be given to “necessary findings in a formal administrative adjudication if the parties had both a full opportunity and the incentive to contest the point at issue on a record that also was subject to judicial review”
- proceeding will have preclusive effect if parties had full opportunity and incentive to contest issue on record that is subject to judicial review
- characterizing Ratliff as holding that the “motor vehicle department’s license suspension procedure too informal for preclu-sive effect.”
- “[A] valid and final administrative adjudication has the same preclusive effects as a court’s judgment.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
PETERSON, C. J.,
concurring.
I concur in the result.
I read the referee’s opinion (quoting from his decision) to find that, because of “a rupture[d] disc” and “[work] restrictions that have been imposed to prevent reinjury,” the claimant “is precluded from returning to work in the wood products industry.” I do not share the majority’s uncertainty concerning the quoted language.
I nonetheless would affirm the Court of Appeals because, as this court has stated, “the [referee’s] determination was [not] essential to the judgment.” State Farm Fire and Casualty v. Reuter, 299 Or 155, 158 , 700 P2d 236 (1985). There is no statute or rule imposing the requirement that a worker be “precluded” from returning to his or her job in order to obtain an award of permanent partial disability. As the majority points out, 307 Or at 637, “[t]o make a claimant appeal an otherwise satisfactory award only to eliminate the preclusive effect of unrequested and nonessential findings would not further the procedural objectives of preclusion * *