The Supreme Court has made it clear that a worker cannot ask for a review of a final ruling on his or her disability just because a fine was later confirmed for his or her company for not carrying out mandatory medical examinations. The court points out that this type of administrative sanction does not serve, by itself, to demonstrate that the employee’s ailments have a work-related origin and, therefore, does not allow overturning a ruling that is already final.
The ruling explains that the review procedure is exceptional and only works with very specific documents, that is, they must exist before the ruling that is to be reviewed, could not have been provided then for reasons beyond the control of the worker, and be truly decisive. The court maintains that this route cannot become a second opportunity to rediscuss a case that has already been resolved, because that would make res judicata meaningless.
Workers may be on sick leave for up to 365 days with the right to extension, but the extension for another six months will only be granted if it is presumed that there will be a cure.
They summon him to talk about vacations and in reality it is an interrogation about his leave: he ends up fired the same day but it is void
This is stated in ruling 448/2026 (STS 1935/2026, available on the Judiciary portal), following the case of a Post Office worker who in 2018 was discharged due to a lumbar vertebral fracture and the following year was declared on total permanent disability due to a common illness. The worker tried to have his case reopened by providing a subsequent ruling that confirmed a fine of 2,046 euros to Correos for not having carried out the medical examinations required by the occupational risk prevention regulations.
A subsequent document does not serve to overturn a final ruling
The Supreme Court explains that article 510.1.1 of the Civil Procedure Law (LEC) only allows a final judgment to be reviewed when a decisive document appears that already existed when the ruling was issued and that could not be provided then due to force majeure or the fault of the other party. None of that happens, according to the court, with a sentence handed down later.
In the case of the delivery person, the document he presented is from January 22, 2025, while the ruling he intended to review is from March 17, 2021. The high court also indicates that it is not even clear that this subsequent ruling is final, a requirement that must be proven by the person filing the lawsuit.
The Supreme Court also clarifies that this document would not be decisive even if it met the rest of the requirements. A fine for not carrying out medical examinations, says the court, only demonstrates that the company failed to comply with that specific obligation, but not that this failure caused or aggravated the worker’s ailments. The link between one thing and the other would require medical proof, not a disciplinary file.
Previous osteoporosis marked the common origin
The resolution indicates that both the Social Court number 5 of Almería and the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia already reasoned at the time why the contingency was common. The worker had a readapted position since 2016 after a previous non-work accident, in which he had already been prohibited from prolonged standing and handling weights exceeding 15 kilos, and the vertebral fracture diagnosed in 2018 had an osteoporotic, non-professional origin.
The Supreme Court ends by saying that the objective of the distributor “cannot be understood other than an attempt to modify the rulings based on a different consideration of the facts”, something that is outside the scope of the review. The court dismisses the claim without imposing costs given the plaintiff’s status as a worker and warns that there is no appeal against this ruling in accordance with article 516.3 of the LEC.