Case ID: f-appx_113/html/0646-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM: \n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

VOLKS CONSTRUCTORS, INC.; Gray Insurance Co., Petitioners, v. Curlis P. MELANCON; Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, United States Department Of Labor, Respondents.
    No. 04-60443.
    Summary Calendar.
    United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
    Decided Nov. 24, 2004.
    Douglass M. Moragas, Harahan, LA, for Petitioners.
    W. Alan Lilley, Goforth & Lilley, Lafayette, LA, Peter Brule Silvain, Jr., Donald Shire, U.S. Department of Labor, Benefits Review Board, Washington, DC, for Respondents.
    Before WIENER, BENAVIDES, and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
   PER CURIAM:

Petitioner Volks Constructors, Inc., and its insurer Petitioner Gray Insurance Co. (collectively “petitioners”), seek review of the final order of the Benefits Review Board (“BRB” or “Board”) that affirmed the Administrative Law Judge’s (“ALJ”) calculation of Melancon’s average weekly wage at $577.45 and awarded total disability compensation of $384.97 per week based on that average weekly wage calculation. We have carefully reviewed the record, paying particular attention to the opinion of the ALJ and the BRB, and have duly considered the factual analyses and legal arguments advanced by counsel for petitioners and respondents as set forth in their respective briefs to this court. When reviewed in the deferential framework that is applicable, viz., upholding the factual findings and legal conclusions of the ALJ if they are grounded in substantial evidence (more than a modicum and not necessarily a preponderance), and are rational and in accordance with law, we are convinced that review should be denied.

As the Board noted, the parties agree that the ALJ employed the appropriate subsection of the LHWCA, 33 U.S.C. § 910(c), to determine Melancon’s average weekly wage. Petitioners’ dissatisfaction is not with the standard applied but with the particular historical earnings figures and sectors of the economy that the ALJ chose to use in his calculation. When viewed in the perspective of the policy of the LHWCA and the plethora of discrete facts in evidence here, we agree with the BRB’s characterization of the ALJ’s handling of this case. We cannot credit respondents’ charge of bias; there is more than substantial evidence to support the facts found and law applied by the ALJ; in the context of § 910(c), the weekly wage calculations are reasonable—not unreasonable—estimates of Melancon’s earning capacity when he was injured; and, candidly, petitioners’ contention that this piledriver operator cum auto mechanic should have his annual earning capacity calculated solely on the basis of his own, subjective profit during a two-season entrepreneurial deviation into crawfish farming, with all of its variables, vicissitudes, and vagaries, borders on the ludicrous.

In sum, we conclude that the determination of the ALJ, and the affirmance thereof by the BRB in its final order, are supported by substantial evidence and are rational and reasonable dispositions of the matter. The petition for review of the final order of the Board is, therefore,

DENIED. 
      
       Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir R. 47.5.4.