Court of Appeals: Industrial Commission must allow offers of proof

In the recent opinion, Willard v. VP Builders, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that the Industrial Commission must allow offers of proof so the commission has the opportunity to review its ruling on the evidence and the appellate court can effectively evaluate the ruling of the commission on appeal.

Offers of proof are a must when the judge excludes evidence during trial or a hearing. Failing to demonstrate what evidence the trial judge refused to admit and its significance to a case means risking a loss at the appellate court.

In Willard, VP Builders attempted to make an offer of proof at a worker’s compensation hearing in front of Deputy Commissioner Phillip Holmes to properly preserve Holmes’ adverse ruling for appellate review. Holmes denied the ruling and so VP appealed the case to the full commission. At this hearing, VP filed a motion to make the offer of proof, but the full commission denied it. VP filed a motion with the full commission to reconsider their ruling, but that motion was denied.

According to the Workers’ Compensation Act, procedures conducted under the Act must be as simple as possible, and the rules of evidence and procedure do not usually apply to the Industrial Commission. But, as with any rule, there are exceptions. The Court of Appeals held in Allen v. K-Mart that “[t]he opportunity to be heard and the right to cross-examine another party’s witnesses are tantamount to due process and basic to our justice system,” holding these principles must be observed by the commission.

Quoting State v. Brown, the court said “[I]t is fundamental that trial counsel be allowed to make a trial record sufficient for appellate review [by submitting an offer of proof.] The court reasoned that there is no justification for disallowing offers of proof during workers’ compensation hearings stating “the same notions of fundamental fairness requiring the general courts of justice to accept offers of proof” should apply in these proceedings.

The court reversed the commission’s decision, but not without first repeating “the rules of procedure and evidence governing proceedings in our general courts of justice do not generally apply in hearings before the Industrial Commission.”

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