Title: Dinwiddie County School Board v. Cole

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

Present:  All the Justices 
 
DINWIDDIE COUNTY 
SCHOOL BOARD, ET AL.                  OPINION BY  
                            CHIEF JUSTICE HARRY L. CARRICO 
v.  Record No. 982520               November 5, 1999 
 
DELORICE M. COLE 
 
FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 
 
 
Under the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act, awards of 
compensation benefits are based upon the average weekly wage.  
Code § 65.2-101.  In the present case, the question presented is 
whether an employee who performs two separate jobs for her 
employer and is injured in one may combine the wages received 
from both in calculating the average weekly wage for 
compensation purposes.  Finding that the Workers’ Compensation 
Commission (the Commission) did not err in combining the 
employee’s wages and awarding compensation accordingly, we will 
affirm. 
 
The employee, Delorice M. Cole (Cole), has been employed by 
the Dinwiddie County School Board (the School Board) as a school 
bus driver for thirty-one years and as a teacher’s aide for 
twenty years.  Each year, she signs a separate contract for each 
position, and she is paid by the School Board separately for 
each job.  Although the School Board has only one bank account, 
Cole is paid from the Transportation Department’s budget for her 
service as a school bus driver and from the Special Education 
Department’s budget for her work as a teacher’s aide. 
 
On December 2, 1996, while performing her job as a 
teacher’s aide, Cole fell and injured her shoulder.  Her injury 
did not prevent her from performing as a teacher’s aide and she 
lost no time from work in that capacity, but the injury did 
prevent her performance as a school bus driver and she lost 
certain periods of time from work in that job. 
 
On January 30, 1997, Cole filed with the Commission a claim 
seeking the award of medical benefits as well as temporary 
disability benefits for periods of lost work as a school bus 
driver.  A deputy commissioner heard the case.  Applying what 
has been termed the “dissimilar employment rule” or the 
“substantially similar doctrine,” the deputy commissioner found 
that, “[a]lthough there are minor overlapping duties required in 
the jobs of bus driver and teacher’s aide, . . . the two jobs 
are not sufficiently ‘similar’ . . . to aggregate the earnings 
in calculating the average weekly wage.”  Accordingly, the 
deputy commissioner awarded Cole no benefits for lost wages but 
did allow her “medical benefits causally related to the 
industrial accident.” 
 
Cole appealed to the full Commission.  The Commission 
agreed that Cole’s jobs were dissimilar but held that “[s]ince 
the employer is the same, the wages earned in both jobs should 
 
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be combined.”  Cole v. Dinwiddie County School Bd., 76 O.W.C. 
480, 485 (1997).  Accordingly, the Commission calculated Cole’s 
average weekly wage based upon her combined income from both 
positions and awarded her payment of temporary partial 
disability benefits for lost earnings.  Id. at 485-86. 
 
The School Board appealed to the Court of Appeals, and that 
Court affirmed the Commission’s award.  Dinwiddie County School 
Bd. v. Cole, 28 Va. App. 462, 465, 506 S.E.2d 36, 37 (1998).  We 
awarded the School Board this appeal.*  
 
Code § 65.2-101, part of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation 
Act, states that “‘[a]verage weekly wage’ means . . . [t]he 
earnings of the injured employee in the employment in which he 
was working at the time of the injury during the period of 
fifty-two weeks immediately preceding the date of the injury, 
divided by fifty-two . . . .”  (Emphasis added.)  The parties 
focus their argument on the phrase, “in the employment,” 
italicized above, and debate the applicability of the dissimilar 
employment rule to the situation at hand, i.e., where there are 
two jobs but only one employer. 
 
The School Board argues that, in this situation, the 
Workers’ Compensation Act required the Commission “to analyze 
the similarity of the employee’s two jobs and to combine the 
                     
*Virginia Municipal Group Self-Insurance Association is also 
a party appellant. 
 
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earnings from each job only if the two employments are 
‘similar’” and that the Commission “wrongly disregarded the 
dissimilarity of Cole’s two jobs . . . and combined the wages 
. . . to calculate the average weekly wage.”  Cole argues that 
the substantial similarity doctrine simply does not apply “when 
the employee works for one employer, albeit in two positions.” 
 
Code § 65.2-101 does not define the phrase, “in the 
employment,” or mention the terms, “similar,” “substantially 
similar,” or “dissimilar.”  The statute, therefore, is not the 
source of the dissimilar employment rule.  Rather, the rule 
originated in the decision of the Industrial Commission (now the 
Workers’ Compensation Commission) in Thompson v. Herbert, 4 
O.I.C. 310 (1922).  That case involved an employee who worked 
part time as a handy man at a cold storage plant and part time 
as a teacher in the public schools.  He was killed while working 
at the cold storage plant, and his widow sought to combine his 
earnings from that job with his earnings as a school teacher.  
Considering the same statutory language that is now contained in 
Code § 65.2-101 and finding that the deceased’s two jobs were 
“totally different,” the Commission held it was not permissible 
to combine wages earned in dissimilar employment because such 
action would “nullify” the statutory language defining “average 
weekly wage” as “the earnings of the injured employee in the 
 
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employment in which he was working at the time of the injury.”  
Id. at 316. 
 
This Court has considered the dissimilar employment rule on 
two previous occasions, and, in each instance, has applied the 
rule to deny the aggregation of earnings in dissimilar 
employment in calculating the average weekly wage.  Uninsured 
Employer’s Fund v. Thrush, 255 Va. 14, 496 S.E.2d 57 (1998) 
(impermissible to combine wages from regular job as pipelayer 
with wages from temporary job as painter because of 
dissimilarity in work); Graham v. Gloucester Furniture Corp., 
169 Va. 505, 194 S.E. 814 (1938) (impermissible to combine wages 
from full-time job as expert mechanic with wages from part-time 
job as steeplejack because of difference in character of work).  
But, like the situation in the Thompson case decided by the 
Commission, Graham and Thrush both involved two employers.  So, 
all three of these prior decisions are inapposite. 
 
In its opinion, the Commission inquired into the question 
“why wages can be combined if the jobs are similar, but should 
not be combined if they are not.”  In response, the Commission 
said that workers’ compensation is designed to place the 
economic burden of work-related injuries on industry and, more 
specifically, on the employer.  The rationale for the 
proposition that the costs of work-related injuries should not 
be expanded beyond similar employment is to prevent the costs 
 
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from being borne out of proportion to an industry’s payroll.  
There is also a risk factor and a rationale that a low-risk 
industry should not have to bear the costs of an injury 
occurring in a high-risk industry.  However, the question 
whether the employment is similar or dissimilar should not be 
relevant when the employer is the same and only the jobs are 
different. 
 
The Court of Appeals took the same view.  It recognized 
that “[t]he substantially similar doctrine prevents combining 
salaries from two separate jobs if the jobs are not similar,” 
but it said that “[t]he rationale for applying the doctrine is 
not present when the two jobs are performed for the same 
employer.”  28 Va. App. at 465, 506 S.E.2d at 37.  The court 
cited the following reasons for its view: 
If an employee works for only one employer, the burden [of 
a work-related injury] is not out of proportion to the 
employer’s payroll or the industry’s risks.  The single 
employer is not being forced to assume responsibility for 
the wages paid by some other employer or the risks of some 
other industry.  Combining a claimant’s wages paid by a 
single employer for two jobs performed is fair to the 
single employer because that employer had already assumed 
the liability risk. 
 
Id. at 464, 506 S.E.2d at 37.  The court also said that the 
decision of the Commission was in keeping with the purpose of 
the Workers’ Compensation Act and entitled to deference because 
it was not wrong as a matter of law.  Id. at 465, 506 S.E.2d at 
37. 
 
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The School Board argues, however, that the Court of Appeals 
erroneously adopted a meaning of the statutory phrase, “in the 
employment,” that emphasizes the relationship of the employee 
with the employer rather than the type of work being performed 
by the employee at the time of injury.  “In effect,” the School 
Board says, “what the Court of Appeals has done is to change, by 
judicial fiat, the statutory phrase ‘earnings of the injured 
employee in the employment’ to ‘earnings of the injured employee 
with the employer’ in defining average weekly wage in this 
particular fact situation.”  This means, the School Board 
claims, that “an employer would be required to pay compensation 
based on combined earnings in two dissimilar jobs when performed 
by one employee, but not so if the same jobs were performed by 
two employees.”  The School Board maintains “that all an 
employer has to do to avoid this unfair result is to hire two 
employees to perform the two jobs.” 
 
We disagree with the School Board.  The Court of Appeals 
has not changed anything.  It was presented a question of first 
impression, and it was writing on a clean slate.  All it did was 
to apply clear statutory language in a context not previously 
considered, one differing from the context in Thompson v. 
Herbert, where the dissimilar employment rule originated. 
 
When the context differs, nothing in Code § 65.2-101 
prevents the placing of emphasis upon the relationship between 
 
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employer and employee rather than the type of work being 
performed in determining average weekly wage.  In Thompson v. 
Herbert, it was necessary for the Commission to place the 
emphasis upon the type of work being performed because, with two 
employers of differing identity, whether the two jobs differed 
or not became the crucial question. 
 
Here, because the employer is of singular identity, the 
emphasis naturally is upon the employer-employee relationship 
and the character of the work becomes an irrelevant 
consideration.  As a matter of common sense and simple logic, it 
cannot reasonably be doubted that Cole was working “in the 
employment” of the School Board when she was injured, regardless 
of whether the particular work she was performing at the time 
was similar to her other work, whether she had separate 
contracts for her two jobs, or whether her wages were charged to 
two separate budgets. 
 
But, should doubt remain, Cole is entitled to the benefit 
of the doubt.  The provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act 
“should be liberally construed to carry out [its] humane and 
beneficial purposes.”  Baggett Transp. Co. v. Dillon, 219 Va. 
633, 637, 248 S.E.2d 819, 822 (1978).  Affirmance of the 
judgment of the Court of Appeals will accomplish these purposes. 
Affirmed. 
 
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