Crutchfield v. District of Columbia Department of Employment Services

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS Nos. 24-AA-1000 & 24-AA-2024 TERESA CRUTCHFIELD, PETITIONER, V. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, RESPONDENT, and CAROLYN BOONE LEWIS HEALTH CENTER and AIG CLAIMS SERVICES, INTERVENORS/CROSS-PETITIONERS. On Petitions for Review of an Order of the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services Compensation Review Board (2024-CRB-000034) (Argued December 16, 2025 Decided September 10, 2026) Brandon Hancock, with whom William J. Lightfoot was on the brief, for petitioner. Graham E. Phillips, Deputy Solicitor General, with whom Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Carolyn S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, and Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, filed a Statement in Lieu of Brief, for respondent.  2 Jillian M. Petrella for intervenors/cross-petitioners. Benjamin E. Douglas filed a brief on behalf of Teamsters Local 639 as amicus curiae. David J. Kapson and Kevin H. Stillman filed a brief on behalf of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. as amicus curiae. Mark H. Dho filed a brief on behalf of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority as amicus curiae. Matthew E. Fioravante filed a brief on behalf of the Association of Compensation Insurance Attorneys as amicus curiae. Before BLACKBURNE-RIGSBY, Chief Judge, HOWARD, Associate Judge, and GLICKMAN, Senior Judge. Opinion for the court by Senior Judge GLICKMAN. Dissenting Opinion by Associate Judge HOWARD at page 23. GLICKMAN, Senior Judge: Petitioner Teresa Crutchfield is a former employee of the Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Center (Carolyn Boone). She ceased working there in December 2012. In 2022, almost a decade later, Ms. Crutchfield applied for disability compensation and medical benefits under the District of Columbia Workers’ Compensation Act, D.C. Code § 32-1501 et seq. She based this application on an injury she had sustained while working at Carolyn Boone in 2011, for which her employer and its insurer had provided benefits voluntarily, without an award, until 2015. After a hearing, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) denied the application as untimely under D.C. Code § 32-1514(a). These petitions for review  3 are from the affirmance of that denial by the Compensation Review Board (CRB). For the following reasons, we uphold the CRB’s determination. Our decision renders it unnecessary for us to consider the alternative grounds for upholding that determination proffered by intervenors. I. We consider the facts material to these review petitions, as found by the ALJ and accepted by the CRB, not to be in serious dispute. In summary, Ms. Crutchfield was employed by Carolyn Boone as a certified nursing assistant. On March 18, 2011, she sustained a work-related injury to her lower back while lifting a large patient to help him move between a shower bed and a regular bed. Carolyn Boone filed a timely report of Ms. Crutchfield’s injury six days later. On November 8, 2011, Ms. Crutchfield filed a claim for workers’ compensation benefits with the Department of Employment Services Office of Workers’ Compensation (OWC). Up to this point, Carolyn Boone had paid Ms. Crutchfield disability compensation and medical benefits voluntarily, and it continued to do so after she filed her November 2011 claim. Because Carolyn Boone did not dispute Ms. Crutchfield’s entitlement to those benefits, no hearing was held to establish her right to them and no formal award was made.  4 Ms. Crutchfield received medical care for her back injury, participated in physical therapy, and underwent employer-arranged independent medical evaluations (IMEs). In August 2012, a physician who performed what was then the most recent IME opined that Ms. Crutchfield could return to full-time sedentary “light duty” subject to restrictions on activity involving bending, climbing, and lifting more than twenty-five pounds. Carolyn Boone offered Ms. Crutchfield what was supposed to be a full-time light duty assignment that complied with the recommended restrictions, and she returned to work. However, as the ALJ subsequently found, Ms. Crutchfield’s new position was not consistent with those restrictions, for it required her, among other things, to carry large boxes weighing more than twenty-five pounds up and down staircases several times a day. Ms. Crutchfield complained to Carolyn Boone’s human resources department that her duties were causing her significant back pain, but she was told she had to continue in the position she had been assigned. Not long afterward, she suffered a fall at work while carrying boxes down the stairs. That was Ms. Crutchfield’s last day on the job; in September 2012, her treating orthopedic surgeon took her off work for medical reasons, stating that “there is no light duty job so [Ms. Crutchfield] will not be working at this stage.”  5 Three months later, on December 13, 2012, Carolyn Boone sent Ms. Crutchfield a letter again offering her full-time, sedentary “light duty work.” The letter specified that this work would be compliant with the restrictions on her physical activity called for in her IME. Ms. Crutchfield declined the offer, however. Consequently, on December 21, 2012, Carolyn Boone issued a Notice of Final Payment of Compensation Payments and a Notice of Controversion. These notices stated that Carolyn Boone was ending Ms. Crutchfield’s workers’ compensation payments as of December 20, 2012, based on her failure to return to work in the light duty position she had been offered. 1 From the date of her injury in 2011 until the Notice of Final Payment, Ms. Crutchfield received $34,011.92 in temporary total disability (TTD) compensation. She has received no additional wage-loss payments. The Controversion Notice advised Ms. Crutchfield that if she disagreed with the denial of further compensation, she could apply for a hearing before the OWC and, in the interim, she could participate in an informal conference with a claims examiner to explore 1 See D.C. Code § 32-1508(3)((V)(iii) (stating, in pertinent part, that “[i]f the employee voluntarily limits his or her income or fails to accept employment commensurate with the employee’s abilities, the employee’s wages after the employee becomes disabled shall be deemed to be the amount the employee would earn if the employee did not voluntarily limit his or her income or did accept employment commensurate with the employee’s abilities.”).  6 whether the disagreement could be resolved. Ms. Crutchfield, who was represented by counsel, requested and attended such a conference in February 2013. The examiner reportedly issued a memorandum of informal conference in April 2013. That memorandum is not in the administrative record on appeal, but Ms. Crutchfield’s brief to this court states (and Carolyn Boone does not dispute) that the examiner found her to be entitled to the continuation of the temporary total disability benefits she had been receiving. Carolyn Boone did not accede to this recommended resolution, however. Ms. Crutchfield then reportedly requested a formal hearing on the cutoff of her disability compensation. (We have not found this request in the administrative record on appeal.) However, for reasons that have not been elucidated in the record, and that are now said by the parties to this appeal to be unknown, a formal hearing to adjudicate Ms. Crutchfield’s entitlement to a resumption of disability compensation was never scheduled. 2 All we know is that, for the next several years, Ms. Crutchfield herself did not pursue and apparently abandoned any challenge at all to the cutoff of her disability compensation; she did nothing to assert a claim or 2 We note that, in his subsequent decision in this case, the ALJ stated that the administrative records “did not reveal a file or documentation regarding the outcome of Claimant’s request for a formal hearing [which] therefore . . . is unknown to the undersigned.”  7 request of any kind, or otherwise trigger the adjudication necessary for a resumption of her compensation. Ms. Crutchfield has never explained why she took no action; she has not claimed, for example, to have been waiting patiently all these years, expecting that a hearing on her 2013 request eventually would be scheduled, or to have been prevented by extraneous circumstances from pressing a claim. To all appearances, Ms. Crutchfield simply accepted the December 2012 cutoff of her total disability wage loss compensation. After that cutoff, Carolyn Boone’s insurer continued to pay for at least some of the ongoing medical care that Ms. Crutchfield evidently still needed for her disabled condition. But the insurer stopped providing medical benefits after it obtained another IME on March 3, 2015. Dr. Matthew Ammerman, the non-treating orthopedic surgeon who performed that IME, opined that Ms. Crutchfield’s two prior surgeries had not improved her condition, that she would not benefit from any further surgeries or other medical interventions (such as injections), and that she had achieved maximum medical improvement. Dr. Ammerman also concluded that Ms. Crutchfield was “capable of gainful employment in a sedentary type capacity” such as answering telephones and doing computer work. It appears that Ms. Crutchfield did not voice any objection to the stoppage of her medical benefits in 2015 or for several years thereafter.  8 In the years following this 2015 assessment, Ms. Crutchfield underwent two additional back surgeries, but she did not resume consistent gainful employment. Nor, for several years, did Ms. Crutchfield pursue her earlier request for a hearing, file a claim, or otherwise seek the resumption of any of her terminated workers’ compensation benefits. But in 2022, Ms. Crutchfield (represented by new counsel) asserted a claim for payment of total disability wage loss compensation for the preceding ten years (from the date her compensation was terminated in December 2012) and continuing thereafter, and for the unreimbursed medical expenses she had incurred on account of her work injury in the nearly eight years following the March 2015 cessation of medical benefits. In response, Carolyn Boone filed an Application for a Formal Hearing on the issues raised by Ms. Crutchfield’s request, specifically including the issue of whether it was barred by the relevant statute of limitations. By this time, Carolyn Boone had gone out of business, but its insurer arranged for an updated IME, which was performed by Dr. Louis Levitt, an orthopedic surgeon, in February 2023. Dr. Levitt seconded Dr. Ammerman’s earlier conclusions that Ms. Crutchfield had reached maximum medical improvement and that she had the capacity to return to work in a sedentary job. Dr. Levitt concluded that “[s]he can sit to perform work tasks with lifting not to exceed 25-30 lbs[.] [A]nd she should  9 have opportunities almost every hour to stand and stretch. She is not totally disabled from gainful employment.” In 2024, after an evidentiary hearing, an ALJ in OWC’s Administrative Hearings Division entered a compensation order denying Ms. Crutchfield’s new benefit claims. 3 The ALJ held that these new claims were untimely under D.C. Code § 32-1505(b), a section of the Workers’ Compensation Act providing that “[a]n injured employee shall have up to 3 years after termination of nonscheduled benefits to re-open his or her case due to changes in condition.” The ALJ found that Ms. Crutchfield had waited “more than 10 years to re-open her case after her last payment of benefits and 8 years after her last payment of medical expenses.” 4 On review, the CRB agreed that Ms. Crutchfield’s claims for restoration of disability compensation and medical benefits were untimely, albeit on a different statutory ground from that on which the ALJ relied. 5 The CRB held that Section Crutchfield v. Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Ctr., AHD No. 23-004, 2024 DC 3 Wrk. Comp. LEXIS 99 (May 9, 2024). 4 The ALJ did not address whether the requirement of a timely claim was satisfied by Ms. Crutchfield’s seemingly abandoned request in 2013 for an administrative hearing on Carolyn Boone’s termination of her compensation payments. Ms. Crutchfield did not advance (and thus seemingly waived) such a contention. Crutchfield v. Carolyn Boone Lewis Health Ctr., CRB No. 24-034, 2024 DC 5 Wrk. Comp. LEXIS 176 (October 11, 2024).  10 32‑1505(b) did not apply in this case because Ms. Crutchfield did not base her claim on a change in her condition; rather, she consistently had maintained that she was and remained totally disabled. 6 The CRB held that Ms. Crutchfield’s claim was governed, instead, by D.C. Code § 32-1514(a), a provision that (the CRB said) “includes a period of limitations for new claims for benefits” and “requires a claimant to file a new claim for compensation benefits within one year from when the claimant was aware, or should have been aware, of the injury” (or other occurrence) that is the basis for the new claim. The one-year limitation barred the claims that Ms. Crutchfield asserted in 2022, the CRB explained, because Ms. Crutchfield “is not alleging she is disabled from a new injury,” but rather that “the same injury has, in her view, resulted in a new claim”—one for the payments that her employer and its insurer had withheld from December 2012 onward. Accordingly, the CRB concluded, Section 32-1514(a) required Ms. Crutchfield to “file[] her request for additional benefits within one year of the date of the last payment” of compensation—i.e., by December 2013, a 6 Because Ms. Crutchfield’s position is that she was totally disabled from the outset and remained so, we apprehend no reason to disagree with the CRB’s determination that Section 32-1505(b) is inapplicable to Ms. Crutchfield’s present claims; but if we were to conclude that Section 32-1505(b) somehow did apply to her present claims, we still would see no reason to reject the ALJ’s conclusion that those claims are time-barred under the three-year limitations period specified in that section of the Workers’ Compensation Act.  11 requirement she had failed to meet. 7 In a concurring opinion, two of the three administrative appeals judges on the CRB panel summarized the ruling on the applicability of Section 32-1514 as follows: Ms. Crutchfield’s claim is barred by § 32-1514. She seeks benefits for a longstanding, permanent, and total disability because of the original workplace injury. She was aware of the relationship between her alleged disability and her employment since it occurred. Thus, under § 32-1514, Ms. Crutchfield should have filed her request for additional benefits within one year of the date of the last payment, which was December 14, 2012. She did not. Her claim is barred. The CRB did not specifically address the portion of Ms. Crutchfield’s claim relating to the subsequent termination of her medical benefits in March 2015, but it affirmed the ALJ’s ruling that this part of her claim too was time-barred since it was not filed until several years afterward. This appeal followed. II. Our standard of review of the CRB’s decision in a workers’ compensation appeal is governed by the District of Columbia’s Administrative Procedure Act. 8 In accordance with the APA, “we will affirm the ruling unless it is arbitrary, capricious, 7 Like the ALJ, the CRB did not consider whether Ms. Crutchfield’s unpursued request for an administrative hearing in 2013 satisfied the timeliness requirement of Section 32-1514(a), presumably because she made no such argument to the CRB. 8 See D.C. Code § 32-1522(b)(3).  12 or otherwise an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.” 9 We defer to the factual findings on which the CRB’s decision rests so long as they are supported by substantial evidence in the record. 10 As for our review of the CRB’s legal rulings, this court summarized the governing principles in Fluellyn as follows: We review the CRB’s legal rulings de novo, recognizing that this court is the final authority on issues of statutory construction. Recognizing agency expertise, however, we accord great weight to any reasonable construction of a statute by the agency charged with its administration. We will sustain the agency’s interpretation even if a petitioner advances another reasonable interpretation of the statute or if we might have been persuaded by the alternate interpretation had we been construing the statute in the first instance. Yet, on the other hand, we will not affirm an administrative determination that reflects a misconception of the relevant law or a faulty application of the law.[11] We also have said that “[t]his court follows the principle that workers’ compensation statutes should be liberally construed to achieve their humanitarian purpose,” which is “to provide financial and medical benefits to employees injured 9 Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 992 A.2d 1276, 1280 (D.C. 2010) (citation modified); see D.C. Code § 2‑510(a)(3)(A). 10 Fluellyn v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 54 A.3d 1156, 1160 (D.C. 2012); see D.C. Code § 2-510(a)(3)(E). 11 Fluellyn, 54 A.3d at 1160 (quotation marks and citations omitted).  13 in work-related incidents.” 12 But “[w]hile that principle allows doubts to be resolved favorably to the employee, it does not relieve the courts of the obligation to apply the law as it is written and in accordance with its plain meaning.” 13 In 2025, the D.C. Council amended Section 2-510 of the Administrative Procedure Act to add new subsection (c). It provides, inter alia, that [i]n reviewing an order or decision of an agency in any court or administrative proceeding, . . . the reviewing tribunal shall defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute or rule it administers, when the statute or rule is silent or ambiguous with respect to a specific issue; provided, that the interpretation is not plainly wrong or inconsistent with either the statute’s or rule’s language or the legislature’s or agency’s intent.[14] This court has yet to address whether or to what extent the language of Section 2- 510(c) deviates from what we said in Fluellyn. Moreover, questions have been raised in past appeals as to whether Section 2-510(c)’s requirement of deferential review is constitutional and consistent with the Home Rule Act, 15 and as to whether the CRB 12 McCamey v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 947 A.2d 1191, 1197 (D.C. 2008) (en banc) (quotation marks and citations omitted). 13 National Geographic Society v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 721 A.2d 618, 622 (D.C. 1998). 14 D.C. Code § 2-510(c); see D.C. Law 26-37, §2, 72 D.C. Reg. 8154 (2025). 15 See LHL Realty Co. DC LLC v. District of Columbia, 357 A.3d 1165, 1171 (D.C. 2026).  14 in particular is entitled to any special deference on our part to its interpretation of the Workers’ Compensation Act. 16 This court has yet to provide definitive answers to those questions; in the cited cases, we found it unnecessary to answer them because we agreed with the agency rulings even without according deference. So too here. “We need not address” the issue of deference in this appeal “because we agree with the CRB’s conclusion as applied to the circumstances of this case,” 17 i.e., the CRB’s conclusion that Ms. Crutchfield’s claim is time-barred under D.C. Code § 32-1514(a). III. Section 32-1514(a) of the Workers’ Compensation Act states that the right to compensation for disability or death under this chapter shall be barred unless a claim therefor is filed within 1 year after the injury or death. If payment of compensation has been made without an award on account of such injury or death, a claim may be filed within 1 year after the date of the last payment. Such claim shall be filed with the Mayor. The time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee or beneficiary is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury or death and the 16 See Schwechter v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 287 A.3d 267, 269-70 (D.C. 2023). This case, however, was decided before the enactment of Section 2-510(c). 17 Id. at 270.  15 employment. Once a claim has been filed with the Mayor, no further written claims are necessary. The Workers’ Compensation Act does not define the term “claim” used in this section. The regulations promulgated to implement the Act define a “claim” to mean simply “an application for benefits made by an injured employee or his or her beneficiary.” 18 This court accordingly has understood the term “claim” to mean “nothing more than a simple request for compensation which triggers the process of claim adjudication.” 19 The regulations further provide that all claims must be made in writing, normally on a form prescribed by the Office of Workers’ Compensation.20 The term “compensation,” used in Section 32-1514(a) and elsewhere in the Workers’ Compensation Act, is defined to mean “the money allowance payable to an employee or to his dependents as provided for in [the Act], and includes funeral benefits provided herein.” 21 This court and the CRB have understood the term 18 7 D.C.M.R. § 299. 19 Ferreira v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 531 A.2d 651, 659- 60 (D.C. 1987); accord, Renard v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 673 A.2d 1274, 1277 n.4 (D.C. 1996). 20 7 D.C.M.R. §§ 202.1, 207.1, 299. 21 D.C. Code § 32-1501(6).  16 “compensation” as used in Section 32-1514(a) to encompass payments for medical benefits as well as wage replacement benefits. 22 By its terms, Section 32-1514(a) thus provides a one-year statute of limitations for employees and their beneficiaries seeking workers’ compensation benefits: “[T]he right to compensation . . . shall be barred” if a claim is not filed within one year after the injury or death, provided that if the employer has voluntarily paid compensation without an award (as in the present case), “a claim may be filed within 1 year after the date of the last payment.” 23 An employee who fails to lodge a timely claim for benefits—including (as is pertinent here) a timely claim challenging the cessation of voluntary payments without an award—forfeits the claim; it will not be adjudicated on the merits. The CRB and this court have 22 See Anderson v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 303 A.3d 370, 374 (D.C. 2023) (“[T]he word ‘compensation’ as used throughout the Workers’ Compensation Act is variable and ‘context-specific,’ and [] it may or may not encompass medical benefits depending on the particular statutory provision in question.” (footnotes omitted)). The Act addresses the obligation of employers to provide medical benefits to disabled employees in D.C. Code § 32-1507, and D.C. Code § 32-1505(a) refers to such benefits as encompassed in the obligation to furnish compensation (“No compensation shall be allowed for the first 3 days of the disability, except the benefits provided for in § 32-1507….”). 23 Section 32-1514(a) further provides that “[t]he time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee or beneficiary is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury or death and the employment.” In this case, it is undisputed that Ms. Crutchfield was aware from the outset and at all relevant times of the relationship between her back injury and her employment.  17 concurred that the purpose of this statute of limitations is “to protect the employer from stale claims and to provide finality by setting a definitive endpoint to claims.” 24 The last sentence of Section 32-1514(a) provides that “[o]nce a claim has been filed . . . no further written claims are necessary.” This court has explained this sentence to mean that “any questions that arise throughout the course of a case, after a claim has been filed under [Section 32-1514(a)], do not constitute new and separate ‘claims for compensation,’ but are simply different issues that must be addressed 24 Anderson, 303 A.3d at 375 (citing intervenors in that case). As the Supreme Court has explained: Statutes of limitation, like the equitable doctrine of laches, in their conclusive effects are designed to promote justice by preventing surprises through the revival of claims that have been allowed to slumber until evidence has been lost, memories have faded, and witnesses have disappeared. The theory is that even if one has a just claim it is unjust not to put the adversary on notice to defend within the period of limitation and that the right to be free of stale claims in time comes to prevail over the right to prosecute them. Order of R. Telegraphers v. Ry. Express Agency, Inc., 321 U.S. 342, 348-349 (1944); see also United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 117 (1979) (explaining that statutes of limitation “protect defendants and the courts from having to deal with cases in which the search for truth may be seriously impaired by the loss of evidence, whether by death or disappearance of witnesses, fading memories, disappearance of documents, or otherwise”).  18 with respect to an employee's claim.” 25 In other words, if a timely filed claim has triggered a still-pending adjudication, the employee need not file a new written claim in order to modify that claim or raise issues relating to it during that adjudication. But if a filed claim is no longer pending adjudication, or if it was resolved without an adjudication, an employee who wishes to reopen her case to request additional workers’ compensation benefits must, of necessity, file a new claim in order to have 25 C&P Tel. Co. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 638 A.2d 690, 696 (D.C. 1994) (emphasis added). We are not aware of any decision of the Compensation Review Board explaining the last sentence of Section 32-1514(a). It does not appear in the counterpart section of the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Act, 33 U.S.C. § 913(a), from which Section 32-1514(a) was derived virtually verbatim, and the legislative history of our Act does not explain the addition of this sentence in our Act. See Report on Bill No. 3-106 before the Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs, Council of the District of Columbia, Statement of Wilhelmina J. Rolark, Chairperson at 14 (Jan. 16, 1980).  19 it adjudicated, since under those circumstances there will not be an adjudication in the absence of a request for it; and the new claim must be timely. 26 We therefore are persuaded that the CRB correctly held that Ms. Crutchfield’s claim in 2022 for a resumption of her workers’ compensation benefits was barred by the applicable statute of limitations, Section 32-1514(a). When the employer has voluntarily paid compensation without an award, but then decides to discontinue paying it, the employee is put to a choice. She may acquiesce in the cessation, in which case adjudication is at an end, or she may file a timely claim for the resumption of her compensation and trigger the necessary adjudication (an 26 Amicus curiae supporting Ms. Crutchfield have called our attention to Combs v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 983 A.2d 1004 (D.C. 2009). There this court opined in dicta that an employee who had made a claim for temporary total disability benefits within a year of his 1991 workplace accident would not have been “precluded from requesting compensation for [temporary partial disability attributable to that accident] in 2003” (which the employee had not done). Id. at 1011 n.6. This aside was superfluous to the court’s opinion and hence is nonbinding, and the court left its underlying rationale unclear at best. In support of it, the court cited only our decision in Capitol Hill Hosp. v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 726 A.2d 682, 684-86 (D.C. 1999). That case is not on point here, however—for one reason, because it addressed the one-year limitations period in a different statute, which is now codified as D.C. Code § 32-1524(a). That section of the Workers’ Compensation Act provides a one-year period in which a party may seek modification of an award based on a subsequent material change of conditions. The parties before us agree that Section 32-1524(a) is inapplicable in the present case because Ms. Crutchfield did not seek to modify an existing compensation order based on a change of conditions; and the CRB specifically agreed with them on the inapplicability of Section 32-1524(a). We do not view the Combs dicta as informative with respect to the proper interpretation of Section 32-1514(a).  20 adjudication that would not happen without such a timely new claim). It is appropriate to afford the employee a reasonable time in which to make that choice after the employer has stopped payments, but at some point, prolonged silence and inaction by the employee is reasonably understood and treated as acquiescence or forfeiture. Thus, as a matter of fairness to both employers and employees, Section 32-1514(a) grants the employee a full year from the date of the last payment in which to decide whether to accept or challenge the employer’s cessation of benefits. 27 Accordingly, Ms. Crutchfield had one year in which to file a claim for her wage loss benefits after Carolyn Boone ceased paying them voluntarily in 2012, and one year in which to file a claim for her medical benefits after those were cut off in 2015. The claim for the reinstatement of benefits that Ms. Crutchfield filed in 2022 was not close to timely. Ms. Crutchfield argues that she did file a timely claim for benefits a decade earlier, in November 2011. But that claim did not trigger any adjudication because, by that point, Carolyn Boone had acknowledged Ms. Crutchfield’s work-related disability and was voluntarily providing the benefits Ms. Crutchfield sought in 27 In some cases, this period may be extended because Section 32-1514(a) provides that “[t]he time for filing a claim shall not begin to run until the employee . . . is aware, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been aware, of the relationship between the injury . . . and the employment.” This proviso is not applicable in the present case.  21 November 2011. Since Carolyn Boone was providing benefits for Ms. Crutchfield’s claim at the time, no adjudication was called for. Moreover, Ms. Crutchfield’s November 2011 claim could not have been understood to challenge Carolyn Boone’s cessation of her wage loss compensation a year later, in December 2012, or its cessation of her medical benefits four years later, in 2015, since the reasons for those decisions had not yet arisen in November 2011. There would be no adjudication of either termination of Ms. Crutchfield’s benefits unless she took the step of initiating it by filing a timely claim—a request for an adjudication—within one year of each of the terminations. 28 Thus, when Ms. Crutchfield belatedly did file a claim several years later (in 2022) for the resumption of her workers’ compensation benefits, her filing was not 28 As we have noted, it has been asserted that, in December 2013, Ms. Crutchfield did request a formal hearing on the cessation of her wage loss benefits, though there is no record of that request and no explanation in the record for her failure to pursue the putative claim. Furthermore, Ms. Crutchfield, who is represented by counsel, has not made any argument in this appeal (nor, as we have already said, in the administrative proceedings culminating in this appeal) that her request in 2013 satisfied the one-year statute of limitations. (And, consequently, her employer and its insurer have had no chance or reason to respond to such an argument.) “It is a basic principle of appellate jurisprudence that points not urged on appeal are deemed to be waived.” Rose v. United States, 629 A.2d 526, 535 (D.C. 1993); see also, e.g., Wallace v. United States, 351 A.3d 1, 1-2 (D.C. 2026); MP PPH, LLC v. District of Columbia, 339 A.3d 132, 145 (D.C. 2025). That principle applies here, and we hold that Ms. Crutchfield has waived any contention she might have made that her alleged request for a formal hearing in 2013 satisfied the one- year statute of limitations in D.C. Code § 32-1514(a).  22 part of any pending claim adjudication. Consequently, Ms. Crutchfield’s 2022 claim could not piggyback on the claim she had filed in 2011; and so, it was time-barred under the one-year rule of Section 32-1514(a). The deadline for filing a claim for the terminated wage loss compensation payments was one year after December 2012, when Carolyn Boone ceased making those payments voluntarily (in the absence of any compensation award). The deadline for filing a claim for the terminated medical benefits was one year after March 2015, when Carolyn Boone’s insurer stopped those voluntary payments (again, in the absence of an award). After March 2016, nothing is said to have occurred that might have enabled Ms. Crutchfield to resurrect the defunct case in 2022, such as a new adverse consequence of her previous work- related injury. 29 Allowing her to do so anyway based on the claim she filed in 2011, when the benefits were being provided voluntarily, would subvert the legislative 29 Cf. WMATA v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Emp. Servs., 981 A.2d 1216 (D.C. 2009). The employee in that case sought to initiate a new claim for disability benefits for a new injury arising from a work-related accident for which she previously had filed a claim. We held that “pursuant to section 32-1514, claimant had one-year, following the time she first became aware, or should have become aware, of her [new] injury, to file a new claim for compensation benefits.” Id. at 1220 (footnote omitted). Our holding recognized that an employee who acts timely may file a new claim for compensation based on new facts or circumstances even if the new claim stems from the same workplace injury as a previously adjudicated compensation claim. See also id. at 1223 n.7 (explaining that such a claimant “would be barred by the doctrine of res judicata or collateral estoppel from filing a new claim under Section 32-1514 . . . . only if claimant was aware or on notice of her subsequent injury at the time she filed her original claim for compensation benefits”).  23 goal of protecting employers from stale claims and providing finality by setting a definite endpoint to the assertion of claims. 30 It would create a precedent for other claimants to do exactly what Ms. Crutchfield did—wait years, even a decade or more, before informing their employers of the claims against them. That is clearly undesirable; in this very case, for example, the employer had gone out of business in the interim and intervenors complain that the long delay seriously impaired their ability to reconstruct the relevant circumstances and present testimony (concerning, for example, the appropriateness of the light duty position that Ms. Crutchfield refused). In short, what Ms. Crutchfield proposes is contrary to what the legislature intended to achieve with Section 32-1514(a) and its one-year limitations period. The compensation claims that Ms. Crutchfield filed in 2022 were time-barred. We affirm the decision of the CRB. So ordered. HOWARD, Associate Judge, dissenting: The majority concludes that an injured employee may not adjudicate the merits of their workers’ compensation claim for benefits following the termination of their benefits unless a separate “new claim” has been filed. Ante at 16-17. In my view, this holding is contrary to the text of the 30 Anderson, 303 A.3d at 375.  24 District’s Workers’ Compensation Act (Act), its legislative intent, and our own precedent. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. To begin, I present a slightly alternative interpretation of Section 32-1514 to that of the majority. Section 32-1514, the section of the Act at issue in this case, contains two operative clauses that define the timeline for a claimant to maintain their right to benefit entitlement under the Act. Under the first clause of Section 32‑1514(a), “the right to compensation for disability or death under [the Act] shall be barred unless a claim therefor is filed within 1 year after the injury or death.” Alternatively, under the second claus