New Mexico: Six-Year Delay by Uninsured Fund to Reinstate Reimbursement Petition Was Untimely

A New Mexico trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to reinstate a 2006 Petition filed by the Uninsured Employers’ Fund (“UEF”) against an employer where the UEF’s Petition was initially dismissed, without prejudice, in 2008—for lack of prosecution—and the UEF then waited, according to the trial court, 2,555 days (six years) before filing a motion to reinstate. The appellate court indicated that it agreed with the UEF’s renewed commitment to its statutory obligation to seek reimbursement from non-compliant employers, but said it could not overlook or excuse the UEF’s “historically lackadaisical approach in this case” and its reluctance to acknowledge the rule that the duty rests upon the claimant at every stage of the proceeding to use diligence to expedite its case. The appellate court added, however, that since there was no applicable statute of limitations related to the UEF’s reimbursement requests, and because dismissal of the UEF’s 2006 Petition was without prejudice, there was nothing to prevent the UEF from filing a new petition for entry of judgment against the employer.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See State Uninsured Employers’ Fund v. Gallegos, 2017 N.M. App. LEXIS 9 (Feb. 14, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.13.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law