## Facts

- Thomas Hebden worked as a coal miner for over thirty years and obtained an unappealed 1985 award of partial disability benefits for coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, effective August 25, 1983.
- The 1985 award provided weekly benefits and stated they would continue until the disability ceased or changed in nature (subject to statutory limits unless disability became permanent).
- In 1987, Bethenergy Mines, Inc. filed a petition seeking to modify/terminate benefits, asserting Hebden was no longer disabled from occupational pulmonary disease.
- At hearings before a different referee, the employer presented medical experts who opined Hebden did not have pneumoconiosis; one expert attributed mild respiratory impairment to non-occupational bronchial asthma and conceded that if Hebden lacked pneumoconiosis later, he would not have had it at the time of the original award.
- Hebden presented medical testimony supporting the continuing diagnosis of pneumoconiosis.
- The referee credited the employer’s medical evidence and terminated benefits; the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board and the Commonwealth Court affirmed.
- Hebden appealed, arguing preclusion doctrines barred the employer from relitigating whether he had work-related pneumoconiosis and disability as established by the final 1985 award.

## Issues

1. Whether res judicata and collateral estoppel bar an employer from terminating benefits by introducing medical evidence that contradicts an unappealed prior finding that the claimant had coal worker’s pneumoconiosis and disability.
2. Whether a petition under § 413 may be granted based on evidence attacking the correctness of the original adjudication, rather than evidence of a change in the claimant’s condition or disability.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed the order affirming termination of benefits.
- The Court held the unappealed 1985 award was a final determination that Hebden had work-related pneumoconiosis and resulting partial disability.
- The employer’s medical proof that Hebden never had pneumoconiosis functioned as an impermissible collateral attack on the final award and could not support termination.
- The Court reinstated benefits awarded for coal worker’s pneumoconiosis-related partial disability.

## Legal Principles

- A final, unappealed workers’ compensation award conclusively establishes the adjudicated facts for purposes of later proceedings between the parties.
- Res judicata and collateral estoppel preclude relitigation of the existence of an occupational disease and disability that were finally determined in the original award.
- A § 413 modification/termination petition must be based on a post-award change in disability or physical condition (increase, decrease, recurrence, or cessation), not a renewed dispute over whether the original disability or disease existed.
- In occupational pulmonary disease cases, evidence asserting the claimant never had the disease found in the original award is treated as relitigation rather than proof of a change in condition.

## Conclusion

The court held that an employer cannot use a modification/termination petition to revisit a final award’s finding of coal worker’s pneumoconiosis by presenting later medical opinions that the claimant never had the disease; only evidence of a genuine change in condition can support modification or termination.


Hebden v. Workmen’s Comp. Appeal Bd. (Bethenergy Mines, Inc.), 534 Pa. 327 (1993)