These consolidated appeals examined whether a workers’ compensation tribunal could reopen its own decision for patent unreasonableness and whether the tribunal’s causation analysis on occupational disease was reviewably unreasonable.
The court held that causation could be inferred from circumstantial evidence despite inconclusive expert opinion, and that the reviewing courts erred by treating absence of definitive expert support as determinative.
Applying deferential patent-unreasonableness review and the statutory tie-breaking rule favouring workers where evidence is evenly weighted, the tribunal’s original causation finding was restored.
The reconsideration decision remained a nullity, but the workers’ appeal succeeded.
