William Leroy Minyard did not ignore his workers’ compensation claim. He did not abandon it, conceal it, or surprise his employer years later with a forgotten injury. He followed the instructions he received, filed the requested forms, and repeatedly tried to move his case forward. Yet through a combination of medical tragedy and court delay, Minyard came dangerously close to losing every remaining benefit—not because his injury was disputed, but because time expired while he waited on the system.
John R. Colbert’s successful appeal in Key Energy Services, Inc. v. Minyard, 2007 OK 99, 173 P.3d 1198 prevented that profoundly unfair result. Colbert persuaded every justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court that the statute of limitations had been tolled and that Minyard’s right to continuing medical treatment must be preserved.
Minyard injured his neck and left shoulder while working for Key Energy Services on June 20, 2000. His employer did not dispute that the injury was compensable. Minyard underwent cervical fusion surgery, received six weeks of temporary total disability benefits, and was eventually released to return to work. But the surgery did not end his problems. He continued suffering symptoms in his neck and shoulder and filed another workers’ compensation claim in July 2002.
At first, Minyard attempted to navigate the system without an attorney. A counselor employed by the Workers’ Compensation Court advised him to request the appointment of an independent medical examiner. That advice placed Minyard on a procedural path that would eventually become the center of the Supreme Court appeal.
To request a trial, Minyard needed to file a Form 9 supported by a medical report. To obtain that medical report, however, he first needed a medical examination. Minyard requested an independent medical examiner in October 2004. The parties agreed on a physician, but before the examination could take place, the doctor died.
Minyard did not give up. In December 2004, he requested another independent medical examiner. The Workers’ Compensation Court waited nearly six months before appointing Dr. Robert Remondino in June 2005. Although the appointment order was entered before the three-year limitations period expired, the court scheduled the actual examination for August—approximately one month after the deadline.
Minyard was trapped. He could not file the required motion for trial without a medical report, and he could not obtain that report until the court-appointed examination occurred. The court itself had selected a date beyond the statutory deadline.
When Dr. Remondino examined Minyard, he recommended further testing and treatment. Another independent examiner later determined that Minyard had a serious spinal-cord injury that placed him at significant risk. The Workers’ Compensation Court rejected the employer’s effort to dismiss the claim and authorized additional medical testing. The Court of Civil Appeals reversed, however, concluding that Minyard had failed to request a final hearing within the three-year statutory period.
That ruling threatened to extinguish the claim completely.
Colbert’s appellate work reframed the issue. The case was not simply about whether a particular form had been filed by a particular date. It was about whether the law should punish an injured worker who had diligently followed the court’s procedures but was prevented from satisfying the deadline by circumstances beyond his control.
Colbert emphasized the procedural contradiction: Minyard was required to produce a medical report before requesting a trial, yet the court-controlled process for obtaining that report extended past the deadline. The employer had not objected to the independent examination and paid for the court-appointed physician’s services. Those circumstances, Colbert successfully argued, demonstrated a conscious recognition of liability and tolled the limitations period.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously agreed. It vacated the Court of Civil Appeals’ opinion and affirmed the Workers’ Compensation Court’s order authorizing Minyard’s continued medical treatment. The Court held that the uncontested order appointing an independent medical examiner within the statutory period suspended the time bar.
The decision was important because statutes of limitations serve a legitimate purpose. They protect parties from stale claims in which evidence has disappeared, memories have faded, or an opponent is unfairly surprised. But those concerns were absent in Minyard’s case. His employer knew about the accident, accepted that it was work-related, paid benefits, participated in the medical process, and did not dispute his need for treatment. The claim had never been allowed to “slumber.”
Instead, Minyard had actively pursued it.
That distinction gave the decision importance beyond its particular facts. Minyard established that a limitations statute should not be mechanically applied when an injured worker has acted in good faith and the workers’ compensation process itself has prevented timely completion of the required steps. Later decisions relied on the case when evaluating whether claimants had genuinely pursued their rights or merely allowed their claims to languish. In McClish v. Woodarts, Inc., the Court of Civil Appeals applied Minyard to circumstances outside a claimant’s control. In 2023, White v. 918 Construction carried its good-faith principle into Oklahoma’s newer administrative workers’ compensation system.
The Supreme Court saved its most powerful observation for the opinion’s final paragraph. Minyard was not a careless claimant who slept on his rights. He had pursued his claim in good faith but was “thwarted from vindicating his rights” by the death of the first physician and the timing of the court-ordered examination.
Those words capture both the injustice Minyard faced and the value of Colbert’s advocacy. A less focused appeal might have become lost in filing dates and form numbers. Colbert made the Court see the person caught behind those procedures—an injured worker doing everything he reasonably could to obtain treatment.
Minyard had been thwarted, but because of John Colbert’s determined and persuasive appellate work, he was not defeated.
