the treasurer to defend the fund against workers compensation claims to hold the claimants to the burden of proof through an adversarial presentation of arguments otherwise this is unlikely to happen because the fund becomes involved only when  uninsured and unable to pay for benefits that's by the time of the administrative hearing the employer may no longer exist or if it exists may have insufficient funds to give it a real stake in the defense this case is about whether the treasurer mr allen appealed on we sixty just review of decisions of the workers compensation commission on the funds behalf i'd like to start by pointing out that excluding the fund from the bond requirement makes same problem the possibility of a shortfall of funds when the legislature considered whether what the fund money might run out of money before all claims were paid in cases that did not involve  it chose not to insure full payment it could have borrowed money for that purpose as a way to just move on does or it could simply have allowed the claims tremaine outstanding until many came in the next fiscal year but cost of appeal bonds in the absence of affirmative statutory language indicating an attempt to do so leaving that aside the plain language of section one thousand have to indicates that the bond requirement applies only when you work for the payment of money is due and third even if it were plausible that is under par and applies to the treasure the consequences of applying it would be absurd under the heading of cost and the bond requirement is just as much an incursion on the rights of the sovereign is any of those things in terms of both liability and control at the very least cost the state the amount of the bond premium and it also affects the plain language actually supports our argument because if you look at the statute in the full context of what the act is doing then it becomes clear because the bond of harmony is directed at the one against whom the commissions will have better word for the payment of money and common sense suggests that such an award should in the tail of a determination of money the one thing you would certainly expect of an award for money is that it tell you how much money is due and section forty of the app provides for the treasurer to be joined with the employer on the claim and therefore he has joined in the award  the the amount of the award against the employer is part of the calculus not the ceiling but there are other factors such as how much money is in the file and how much will be collected by the end of the year how many claims there will be by the end of the fiscal year and also whether the and the list of exemptions does not apply to the treasurer is included either because a list of exemptions comes straight from the definition of employer in section one of the act and there's no evidence legislature was even aware of the possibility that it might be applied to the treasure and the fact that the provision is very broad it includes every possible government employer with the exception of the state and federal governments and the state has already been excluded in section one thousand f one and the federal employer won't appear before the commission because the federal government has its own program for handling these things and when you look at the breadth of the for and also there's no reason for distinguishing the treasure or the fund as a government agency because it is if anything less the fans or less that would be dissipated because the fund doesn't do differentiate between primary liability and derivative liability it doesn't make sense to suggest that all government agencies who have primary liability should be exempted and the one that's on the rivet of liability should be forced to f fund then you hurt other claimants whether or not you give any benefit to the claimant at issue in the appeal and if you take money from the treasures of the attorney general's own appropriations you're increasing the liability of the state and that serves to ensure what the statute provides but if the bond provides nothing more than the statutory amount and it adds no additional protection and in event the bond is never going to be triggered by definition are that would apply to all state agencies you don't need a bank as the state is not going to dissipate its assets we presume it will not and also the claimant has some protection through his right to seek mandamus for a private employer needs a needs a bond against a private employer so that they can sue on the bond but in cases involving the state having a contractual promise adds nothing to the statutory then there's nothing there so we distribute nothing but it satisfies the statute and we we don't think that's particularly likely to happen either it's true that they're there what were alleged to have diversions in the past but at that point there was a great deal of extra money sitting in the fund and since then it no doubt seemed reasonable the time to take this excess money and use it for other things that the state really needed since then we've had more claims coming in and i think it's unlikely that that will have a problem of legislative diversion and if if if that is what the general assembly wanted they can solve their of the the reason that the language about except in cases of claims against the state of illinois we think does not apply to keep the treasure from falling in appeal in the first also it doesn't make sense to suppose that the legislature intended the phrase the state of illinois to be a general test of sovereign immunity because it may be helpful to distinguish between employers using the te whether or not any particular employer the state employer but you don't need to use it because for any other kind of entity because the state is only going to be submitting to liability if  court found that there was no sovereign immunity because the action was a continuation of the original action rather than an original action against the state and also that there was a very minor incursion on the rights of us and that applies in this case and finally section one thousand have one has never previously been interpreted as preventing the treasurer for the killing in other cases this is not dispositive but we think it that the language is quite language on a big us and we don't go through the contortions the gymnastics and the legislative history if the plain ordinary language  point one which was created subsequent to the two thousand and five creation of this fine they carved out an exception for commission employees and now have a ministry to the right or minister here there is no polluted that respectfully this honorable section and there would be a matter to be looked at later if the legislature decides to amend it i'm sure that if we agree with your plain language variable right i'm sure they could fix it most most controversies and most conversations about quo during the pendency of the appeal and since all appeals costs all parties significant money and lost opportunity there is another another benefit to requiring upon and that's to give pause the party considering the we don't need to go into any further investigation and if we apply the plain ordinary language of f one and f two and find ourselves with a list of people that required to file a bond and a list of people that are exempt  the people exempted from filing the bond are basically municipal corporations it's the same group of people that are set forth an article seven of the only state constitution village's a tower it's as  corporations other body politic they don't delineate every single type of me just corporations visit other body politic so for example a hamlet of borough naperville decides to change its name back to a neighbor settlement they distribution of the fund just work i don't find that differentiation in inside the language that's the second misapprehension in that i believe the attorney general makes is that concluding that the mount of the bond is the amount of money that you get you don't mentioned what what sort of different situations because the fund not to have any money and i submit to you that that the there's lots of reasons why i might my client might be took on one of which would be perhaps the legislature decides to that this whole if you work a benefit thing isn't really working out and we're just going to shut it down what if representative bradley's house bill ten thirty two in two thousand and eleven which will repeal the entire worker's compensation act what if the what if the governor elect in the general assembly sites that we're going to change the way the system works and then we have a whole class of people that have judgments that are pending because of an appeal that are unable to collect their their funds and this isn't a lottery the people who have these awards didn't win the awards in the sense that they got something they were entitle to their crime their every single person was an eligible claimant a victim of crime the failure to have workers jurisdiction requirements to have your case brought before the new circuit court at the at the time that this case was heard the laws been changed a little bit well i'll dress it just briefly but there's two things that you have to do you have to file upon it unless you're exempted and number two is you have to pay for the transfer every commission decision says that the approximate cost of this transcript will be x amount of dollars thirty five dollars and in order to get a copy of that transcript to have it sent over to the circuit court somebody has to pay for it and it portion from someplace they could if they can afford the thirty five dollars then i'm pretty sure that there's a will there's a means to pay for the bonds as well and i dread to not shoot not just some sort of controlling law but just as a matter of requires in an appeal by a government officer that's not for not for the benefit of the general public if you would like to stay the execution of that judgment you must file a pot is not the sought the drastically different than having the treasury file upon in in a worker's compensation and i'd submit to you that there is there as i said before the people who who are have these these are eligible claimants these people that have been wrong that they haven't been able have surgeries authorized they're only allowed to claim one judgment of one award from the injured workers benefit fund its it is a remedial done to help out in a remedial situation for people who have already been victimized in situation and i submit to you that that the general assembly directed us to whom does not have to file a bond and the attorney general's office tells you that it's the plain meaning tells you that they're not on the list if they're right we don't go any for x amount of dollars i sought the payment of that award in for all the injured works benefits one had paid the medical bills directly thereby depriving my office of attorney fees hannity as well as depriving my client of the opportunity to go in  as the as the custodian of the injured workers better fund is a party to this case and there this state of illinois and if they are still there are immune by sovereign immunity you may not enforce the judgment so if i submit you the treasure can't have it both ways either they are if they have the privilege of sovereign immunity or they have to follow the rules if they're going to if there's if they are that in fact the state of illinois then we can't be here anyway because the general of the general assembly has not granted explicitly jurisdiction to this court to review the case any other claim against the state of illinois absent the changes made to eighteen point one  not reviewable in the in the circuit court that if a person is if a state employees injured in the commission of words money just like the commission awarded my claim on you could there is no a minister to review that this is on the basis of of contemplates that other people may in fact pay part of that all or so there are third party awards and if we change the state the right to a subrogation interest in any of those payments but i submit to you that if injured workers benefit fine is closed then we would have the right to proceed on an action against that bond and then i would be paid the amount of money at that time with is owed on on the w  it's it's the position of the injured worker in this case that that that they would like to have they were awarded benefits as the only workers compensation commission determined reinstated in order that in order to do that we just look at the look at whether or consistent with the digs up is out or finding or number two that there is a list and in the attorney general's office tells you the plain meaning of that this is they they're not on it because they didn't file a bond that i submit to  has been averted elsewhere correct while this award was for it for this year there was one hundred percent pain and that instant case before this court there was an award for one hundred percent it is true that other years there's been less than but is it not true then if it was less than one hundred percent you would get less than the award but if the entire fund was dissipated through diversion by the legislature you could proceed against the bond and get the entire amount of your award and how does that have to that there should have been a bond file and whether the judge what would the reason the general assembly one of the band be filed i don't think we need to go further and as i said earlier we need to comply and abide and it is ours to ask or at ask or wonder why if in fact the attorney general's office is correct and that the plain ordinary language speaks for itself so i thank you for a time a counselor let me just ask you this quickly you just did did the and you may have already answered this sort of apologized but did the commission actually render the award name on the face of the order against the employer and the fund yes just for both both both entities the the word itself is against the treasurer as custodian  workers benefit and that's what it says on the face of the order yes ok thank you thank you i'd just like to say a few things in response that first in response to the last question about what your ward says the award mentions both the treasurer and the employer and the other people in the caption and throughout it refers to a single respondent but it also says in a special section that the old word is entered against the fund to the extent it's appropriate under section forty  so it it does not clearly suggest by any means that the it is entered in just the same way as it is against the employer  case it does not submit him to any broader sort of liability it's nothing more than the same kind we have joined of provisions like that and mr to you cases all the time and they are not considered to  violate sovereign immunity or to be liability against the state with respect to his mentioning the thirty five dollars paid for the case record it's not clear exactly what happened with respect to that payment it mentions an account it's not clear that money was actually paid but even if it was what may have happened in any particular point in the past  not indicate what the rights of the treasurer and the fund are in this case if it did we wouldn't be here because it was the custom in the past that the treasurer did not think about and so and he wants to i have a different rule applied letting the statute pay out he suggests that if the account is closed then he gets the full amount of the bond but there's nothing that suggests that the legislative change and titles him to the full amount of the bond and he's not entitled also to something like he seems to think that it's something like nineteen ga relief in one thousand g believe says that you can't you can't bring in legal defenses you just pay the full amount of the award and that's it but the reason that that the reason that the provision doesn't allow for any defenses is that the part of that opposes the work has already had an opportunity to appeal at that point there is the award and then there's an opportunity to appeal within twenty days and then the person can bring the judgment there was no opportunity to for the treasurer to appeal based on the commission's determination at that second are not inconsistent because sovereign immunity is not something that inheres in the treasure in his very nature whether sovereign immunity to ply applies depends on the claims that are brought in the relief that is as the claims that were brought in relief those asked for are very different in the two cases the two decisions did rely on the language of nineteen g and and nineteen f one and they construed it as coextensive with sovereign immunity and were arguing that that's not right and they also said that the money is in the fund were not state funds or  not but that the bottom line results were correct because in the in the treasure case they held that there was that it was in the administrative review action that there was no liability imposed on the state and there was no they are taking the treasurer and they're going to compel him to do something apart from what the statute says that's the essence of control that's being independent of court making do something that's exactly what sovereign and she says not to do whereas  with the judicial review action there is although it's state money because the pro rata rule provides for no money to be brought out from any other source there is  no possibility of increase or decrease in the liability it's just been shifting around within the fund and there's no control exercised against the treasure because they simply interpret the law and leave the treasures management of things  that the plain language shows that the award is a mint of money was not against the treasurer because it did not determine what was owed at the time of the award and also that