Chartiers
Community Mental Health & Retardation Center v. UCBR – Cmwlth. Court –
March 10, 2016
Court
affirmed UCBR decision that claimant’s appeal was timely under 34 Pa. Code
101.82(b) where the UCBR recorded receipt of the email appeal within required
period, even though the Board was unable to open the secure message box in the
email. On the date it received the appeal, the Board emailed
claimant’s counsel that: a) it couldn’t open the secure message box; b)
claimant should provide the information as an attachment or in the body of an
email. “The Board did not provide a deadline” foe doing any of this.
Citing
Mountain Home Beagle Media v. UCBR, 955 A.2d 484 (Pa. Cmwlth.
2008), Roman-Hutchinson v. UCBR, 972 A.2d 1286 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2009), and McClean
v. UCBR, 908 A.2d 956 (Pa. Cwmlth. 2006), the Board and Court held that the
appeal was timely under 34 Pa. Code 101.82(b), because the Board recorded
receipt of the appeal within the required time.
Even
though an appellant who uses electronic transmission accepts the risk of
non-receipt, “a risk...is not a certainty. As long as the electronic
transmission is received prior to the expiration of the appeal period, the
regulation affords the Board discretion to instruct the employer or claimant on
how to proceed if there is an issue with readability. This is not unlike this
Court’s own internal operating procedures, which direct the Chief Clerk to
time-stamp written communication that evidences an intention to appeal with the
date of receipt and to advise the party by letter of the procedures
necessary to perfect an appeal, as well as the time within which the party must
file a fully conforming petition for review in order to preserve the date of
receipt of the original non-conforming request to appeal. See Commonwealth
Court Internal Operating Procedure No. 211, 210 Pa. Code. § 69.211 (Petition
for Review; Clarification). The Board acted fully within its discretion in
directing Claimant to resend the unreadable segments of her email once it had
received her appeal.
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