Title: State ex rel. Burrows v. Indus. Comm.

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

The State ex rel. Burrows, Appellee, v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, Appellee; 
Akron City Hospital, Appellant. 
[Cite as State ex rel. Burrows v. Indus. Comm. (1997), _____ Ohio St.3d _____.] 
Workers’ compensation -- Benefits -- R.C. 4123.57(A) imposes a forty-
week waiting period only for temporary total disability compensation 
paid specifically pursuant to R.C. 4123.56, notwithstanding that 
claimants 
cannot 
be 
paid 
living 
maintenance 
wage 
loss 
compensation and R.C. 4123.57(A) permanent partial disability 
compensation at the same time. 
 
(No. 94-2728 -- Submitted January 21, 1997 -- Decided March 26, 1997.) 
 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Franklin County, No. 93APD11-
1511. 
 
Akron City Hospital, appellant, seeks reversal of the Franklin County Court 
of Appeals’ judgment granting Ruth Burrows, appellee, a writ of mandamus.  The 
writ ordered the Industrial Commission of Ohio, appellee, to process Burrows’s 
application for permanent partial disability compensation (“PPD”), which the 
commission had dismissed as untimely, and to determine her entitlement to this 
compensation. 
 
Burrows injured her back, shoulder, and hip in October 1987 while working 
at Akron City Hospital, a self-insured employer for the purpose of workers’ 
 
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compensation claims.  After the allowance of her claim, Burrows received 
temporary total disability compensation (“TTD”) pursuant to R.C. 4123.56(A) 
until November 4, 1990, when she entered a rehabilitation program.  While 
participating in the rehabilitation program, Burrows received living maintenance 
benefits, available under R.C. 4121.63.  She returned to work on January 14, 1991 
and, due to her physical limitations, assumed a position that did not pay as well as 
her former job.  As a result, Burrows qualified for living maintenance wage loss 
compensation under R.C. 4121.67(B). 
 
On May 12, 1992, Burrows applied for the commission to determine the 
percentage of her permanent partial disability pursuant to R.C. 4123.57(A).  The 
Administrator of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation initially awarded PPD in a 
“tentative” order.  On the hospital’s objections to the order, a commission district 
hearing officer determined Burrows’s percentage of permanent partial disability to 
be eighteen percent and granted her application for PPD.  The hospital requested 
reconsideration, arguing that (1) R.C. 4123.57(A) claimants could not apply for 
PPD under the statute until forty weeks after their last payment for living 
maintenance wage loss compensation, and (2) Burrows had filed her application 
while still receiving this compensation.  A commission staff hearing officer agreed 
 
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with the hospital and dismissed Burrows’s application as untimely on the authority 
of R.C. 4121.63, 4121.67(B), and 4123.57. 
 
Burrows then requested the instant writ in the court of appeals.  She argued 
that the R.C. 4123.57(A) application process imposed a forty-week waiting period 
only with respect to TTD paid pursuant to R.C. 4123.56.  A referee disagreed, 
finding that R.C. 4123.57, when read in pari materia with R.C. 4121.63 and 
4121.67(B), imposed the waiting period with respect to payments for living 
maintenance and living maintenance wage loss compensation as well as 
compensation payable under R.C. 4123.56.  The referee recommended denial of 
all relief, but on Burrows’s objections, the court of appeals rejected the referee’s 
analysis.  Citing the plain language of R.C. 4123.57, the court granted the writ and 
returned the cause to the commission for an appropriate determination of 
Burrows’s PPD eligibility. 
 
The cause is before this court upon an appeal as of right. 
 
Ben Sheerer Law Offices and Thomas R. Pitts, for appellee Burrows. 
 
Betty D. Montgomery, Attorney General, and Melanie Cornelius, Assistant 
Attorney General, for appellee Industrial Commission. 
 
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Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs, A L. P.A., and Deborah Sesek, for 
appellant. 
 
Per Curiam.  Two issues are presented for our review: (1) Did the 
commission err in dismissing Burrows’s PPD application as untimely? and (2) Are 
claimants eligible for PPD under R.C. 4123.57(A) if receiving living maintenance 
wage loss compensation under R.C. 4121.67(B)?  For the reasons that follow we 
hold that R.C. 4123.57(A) imposes the forty-week waiting period only for TTD 
paid specifically pursuant to R.C. 4123.56, notwithstanding that claimants cannot 
be paid living maintenance wage loss compensation and R.C. 4123.57(A) PPD at 
the same time.  Accordingly, we affirm. 
R.C. 4123.57 Waiting Period 
 
The General Assembly established the forty-week waiting period in R.C. 
4123.57 for PPD applications to ensure permanency at the time of the 
determination.  Fulton, Ohio Workers’ Compensation Law (1991) 203, Section 
9.11.  The statute provided: 
 
“Partial disability compensation shall be paid as follows. 
 
“Not earlier than forty weeks after the date of termination of the latest 
period of payments under section 4123.56 of the Revised Code, or not earlier than 
 
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forty weeks after the date of the injury or contraction of an occupational disease in 
the absence of payments under section 4123.56 of the Revised Code, the employee 
may file an application with the industrial commission for the determination of the 
percentage of his permanent partial disability resulting from the injury or 
occupational disease.” (Emphasis added.) 141 Ohio Laws, Part I, 767. 
 
The court of appeals applied R.C. 4123.57 precisely as written and 
determined that only a claimant’s receipt of TTD under R.C. 4123.56 invoked the 
forty-week application waiting period.  The court thus held that Burrows’s receipt 
of R.C. 4121.67(B) living maintenance wage loss compensation as of the date of 
her PPD application did not render the application untimely.  Burrows uses the 
same analysis to urge us to affirm. 
 
But the hospital and commission insist that the analysis is more difficult.  
They argue that when R.C. 4123.57 is read in pari materia with R.C. 4121.63 and 
4121.67(B), the result is a waiting period that applies to living maintenance and 
living maintenance wage loss compensation because both are to be considered 
forms of TTD under R.C. 4123.56.  Their reasoning is syllogistic: 
 
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1.  R.C. 4121.67(B) directs that living maintenance wage loss compensation 
be paid “in the same manner as living maintenance payments are made pursuant to 
[R.C. 4121.63]”; and  
 
2.  R.C. 4121.63 provides that “[a] claimant receiving living maintenance 
payments shall be deemed to be temporarily totally disabled and shall receive no 
payment of any type of compensation except as provided by [R.C. 4123.57(B) 
(scheduled losses)] * * * [while] receiving living maintenance payments”; 
therefore, 
 
3.  A claimant receiving living maintenance wage loss compensation is 
“deemed” temporarily totally disabled for all purposes, including the R.C. 4123.57 
waiting period, and, further, is ineligible for all compensation except R.C. 
4123.57(B) scheduled losses. 
 
The General Assembly may have anticipated that living maintenance 
compensation paid pursuant to R.C. 4121.63 and living maintenance wage loss 
compensation paid pursuant to R.C. 4121.67(B) would always be treated as forms 
of TTD.  However, in determining legislative intent, we must first look to the plain 
language of R.C. 4123.57.  “If the meaning of the statute is unambiguous and 
definite, it must be applied as written and no further interpretation is necessary.”  
 
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State ex rel. Savarese v. Buckeye Local School Dist. Bd. of Edn. (1996), 74 Ohio 
St.3d 543, 545, 660 N.E.2d 463, 465.  Unambiguous statutes are to be applied 
according to the plain meaning of the words used, Roxane Laboratories, Inc. v. 
Tracy (1996), 75 Ohio St.3d 125, 127, 661 N.E.2d 1011, 1012, and courts are not 
free to delete or insert other words, State ex rel. Cassels v. Dayton City School 
Dist. Bd. of Edn. (1994), 69 Ohio St.3d 217, 220, 631 N.E.2d 150, 153. 
 
The R.C. 4123.57(A) waiting period is not ambiguous -- it averts PPD 
applications for forty weeks after a claimant stops receiving “payments under 
section 4123.56 of the Revised Code.”  The statute does not mention R.C. 4121.63 
or 4121.67(B).  Moreover, payments available under R.C. 4123.56 are basically of 
two types -- division (A) compensates claimants for wages lost due to an 
incapacity to work at their former jobs, and division (B) compensates claimants 
who are capable of other employment and suffer a wage loss.  Neither type of 
compensation incorporates the further requirement, as do R.C. 4121.63 and 
4121.67(B), that the claimant participate in a rehabilitation program.  Thus, for 
whatever reason claimants are “deemed” temporarily and totally disabled by virtue 
of having been paid living maintenance compensation or living maintenance wage 
 
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loss compensation, this compensation is not payable “under” R.C. 4123.56 as that 
term is used in R.C. 4123.57. 
 
The in pari materia rule of construction may be used in interpreting a 
statute, but first some doubt or ambiguity must exist.  State ex rel. Herman v. 
Klopfleisch (1995), 72 Ohio St.3d 581, 585, 651 N.E.2d 995, 998.  Here, the R.C. 
4123.57 waiting period becomes subject to different interpretations -- whether it 
applies exclusively to claimants receiving R.C. 4123.56 compensation or also to 
claimants receiving R.C. 4121.63 and 4121.67(B) compensation -- only because 
R.C. 4121.63, which R.C. 4123.57 does not incorporate, declares these claimants 
alike.  Thus, in this instance, the in pari materia rule actually creates the 
ambiguity that the hospital and commission urge us to resolve. 
 
For these reasons, we are not obligated to defer to the commission’s 
interpretation of the R.C. 4123.57 waiting period.  In its Policy Statement and 
Guideline issued January 1, 1989, the commission pronounced that applications 
for percentage of permanent disability compensation could not be filed until forty 
weeks after the date of the last payment of living maintenance compensation.  This 
policy statement contravenes the express language of R.C. 4123.57 and, therefore, 
 
9
must yield to the higher authority.  See, e.g., State ex rel. Crabtree v. Ohio Bur. of 
Workers’ Comp. (1994), 71 Ohio St.3d 504, 644 N.E.2d 361. 
 
Burrows received her last payment under R.C. 4123.56 on November 4, 
1990.  She applied for PPD under R.C. 4123.57(A) on May 12, 1992, long past the 
forty-week waiting period.  Her application, therefore, was not untimely. 
Receipt of R.C. 4123.57(A) and 4121.67(B) Compensation 
 
The hospital and commission also argue that Burrows cannot receive living 
maintenance wage loss compensation while she is receiving percentage of 
permanent partial disability payments under R.C. 4123.57(A).  This time, plain 
statutory language supports their position. 
 
R.C. 4121.67(B) requires that living maintenance wage loss compensation 
be paid “in the same manner” as living maintenance compensation is paid pursuant 
to R.C. 4121.63.  R.C. 4121.63 precludes “payment of any type of compensation 
except as provided by division (B) of section 4123.57 of the Revised Code for the 
periods during which the claimant is receiving living maintenance payments.”  
Thus, percentage of permanent partial disability awards under R.C. 4123.57(A) 
cannot be paid to claimants receiving either living maintenance or living 
maintenance wage loss compensation. 
 
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Having found that R.C. 4123.57(A) imposes the forty-week waiting period 
only for TTD paid specifically pursuant to R.C. 4123.56, notwithstanding that 
claimants cannot be paid living maintenance wage loss compensation and R.C. 
4123.57(A) PPD at the same time, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals 
that grants a writ of mandamus to compel the commission’s further consideration 
of Burrows’s PPD application. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
MOYER, C.J., DOUGLAS, RESNICK, F.E. SWEENEY, PFEIFER, COOK and 
LUNDBERG STRATTON, JJ., concur.