Opinion ID: 2584108
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Problems with the Court's Rationale

Text: The court permits DeShong to recover TTD benefits even though the statute does not. In affirming, the court approves the procedure adopted by the board: Because the board ... did not err in requiring DeShong to repay her unemployment benefits ..., we AFFIRM. [30] But the board based that result on the board's fundamental misreading of section .187. Thus, the board concluded that DeShong was eligible for TTD benefits for the disputed period, provided she repays the [unemployment] benefits received as required by AS 23.30.187.  (Emphasis added.) If the statute had contained such a requirement, it would have implied the remedy the board fashioned. But nothing in section .187 requires repayment of other benefits. The linchpin of the board's remedy does not exist. Indeed, the statute says nothing about repayment. And it says nothing about regaining eligibility for workers' compensation. Because the statute makes receipt of unemployment benefits the disqualifying event, and because repayment does not negate the fact of past receipt, the statute's words expressly and implicitly foreclose the board's notion that repayment restores eligibility. This court's opinion also seems to rest on a similar misapprehension. It reasons that repayment enabled DeShong to receive the workers' compensation benefits she was entitled to. [31] But per section .187, for the weeks for which DeShong received unemployment compensation, she is entitled to no workers' compensation benefits. The court's opinion also implicitly reads the statute to make retention of unemployment compensation the disqualifying event. If it were, repayment might be a fair way to avoid the statutory bar. But the statute's words make receipt, not retention, the disqualifying event. [32] Ineligibility does not arise exclusively out of present receipt of benefits; per the plain language of section.187 and AS 01.10.050(a), past receipt is also a disqualifier. DeShong received unemployment benefits in the past; she is consequently ineligible for TTD benefits for those weeks. The procedure fashioned by the board and endorsed by this court's opinion has the unavoidable effect of adding new words to the statute. [33] By limiting the preclusion, the opinion creates a procedure, not implied or expressed by the legislature in section .187 or anywhere else, by which workers' compensation claimants seeking TTD benefits can restore their eligibility. This procedure gives claimants an option the legislature did not choose to give them. Section .187 does not provide injured workers a choice between benefit systems. Given the clarity of the statute, the legislative history would have to be remarkably clear to support the court's interpretation of the statute. I do not read the legislative history discussed by the court to imply, much less clearly and unequivocally express, an intention to allow the reading the board and this court attribute to the statute. Moreover, after reviewing the legislative history, the court's opinion observes that It certainly does not appear that the legislature envisioned the situation currently before this court.... [34] That observation seems to conflict with any contention that the statute is ambiguous because it fails to carry out the legislature's intentions with respect to the present situation, or that the legislature actually intended the statute to provide relief in a situation like DeShong's. At first glance, it may seem to make sense to condition recovery of workers' compensation benefits on repayment of unemployment compensation. But section .187 gives the Alaska Workers' Compensation Board no authority to order a workers' compensation claimant to repay benefits the claimant recovered under AS 23.20. The board does not administer unemployment compensation claims. Its authority is limited to claims under AS 23.30. Had DeShong declined to repay the unemployment benefits, section.187 would have given the board no legal basis for requiring her to do so as a condition for becoming eligible for TTD benefits. Her refusal would have forced the board to decide whether section .187 permits a worker to receive (and retain) overlapping benefits, or whether (as I think) section .187 prohibits recovery of TTD benefits for the same period. A claimant's willingness to repay the unemployment benefits cannot unilaterally alter the meaning of a statute. The legislature elsewhere gave the board authority to order a person improperly obtaining benefits under AS 23.30 to reimburse the cost of all such benefits, but that authority only covers benefits under this chapter, i.e., workers' compensation benefits. [35] That grant of authority reveals that the legislature knew how to write a statute giving the board authority to require repayment when that was what the legislature intended. Nothing I see in AS 23.30 gives the board general authority to do what it did here. Assuming the board has inherent authority to resolve disputes fairly and in a way that maximizes workers' compensation benefits, that authority would not justify reading section .187 to require repayment, or to authorize a procedure for regaining eligibility. The existence of express remedies in other provisions in these acts militates against the procedure approved here. An AESA section, AS 23.20.390, provides for repayment of unemployment compensation benefits, but only if the worker was not entitled to receive them. Section .390 does not refer to the Alaska Workers' Compensation Act or to receipt of workers' compensation benefits; there is no claim here that DeShong was not eligible for Alaska Employment Security Act benefits when she sought and received unemployment compensation payments. Nor does the AESA disqualify a worker from receiving unemployment compensation benefits if the worker also received workers' compensation benefits. Other provisions in these remedial acts reveal that the legislature knew how to enact statutory provisions calling for reductions in benefits (AS 23.20.362), repayment (AS 23.20.390), offsets (AS 23.30.225), or reimbursement (AS 23.30.155(j)), when it wished to do so. Implicit in the decisions of the board and this court is the notion that the statute permits a partially disabled worker, like DeShong, to be treated differently from a totally disabled worker. But insofar as this distinction seemingly turns on whether a worker, in applying for unemployment compensation, candidly reveals that she was only partially disabled, it is foreclosed by the words of section .187. They flatly preclude recovery of total disability benefits for the weeks for which an employee received unemployment compensation, without regard to what she said in her unemployment compensation application. This distinction is also factually foreclosed here: DeShong sought temporary total, not temporary partial, workers' compensation benefits. Section .187 expressly applies to an employee seeking workers' compensation benefits for total disability. The court relies on the purpose of the legislation, characterizing it as having the purpose of precluding double recovery. [36] Treating that purpose as controlling, the court reads the statute in a way that avoids double recovery, by making DeShong repay the unemployment benefits in order to be eligible to receive TTD benefits. This purpose does not justify misreading the statute. First, this is not the only statutory purpose; the legislative history reveals a variety of motivations; the section-by-section analysis refers to eligibility. [37] Second, the words of the statute are so transparent that they control. [38] Third, having a purpose of avoiding double recovery does not say how it is to be achieved. The method the legislature chose to prevent double recoveryineligibilityis effective. That other methods arguably might have been equally effective or socially more desirable does not allow us to rewrite the statute. The court declines to decide whether an offset might have been superior to reimbursement. [39] An offset would be another way to avoid an overlap. An offset would also require both schemes to contribute. On its face, the statute would not permit that result. Of course, it does not permit the result the court reaches, either. Because it declines to consider the offset method, the court simply chooses the repayment method. Each method implicates policy choices best left to the legislature. Permitting a claimant to repay unemployment benefits before receiving TTD benefits means that the full loss is ultimately borne by the workers' compensation system. The choice the court makes today is a policy choice. That there is more than one way to fashion a remedy and that choosing one way necessarily burdens one interest or another confirms that these are choices we should not be making. That is especially so given the complete absence of words in section .187 giving the court any basis for deviating from the choice the legislature made. The opinion says that requiring DeShong to repay her unemployment benefits before she is entitled to receive TTD benefits is an appropriate response to DeShong's situation. [40] Likewise, the court assumes the legislature did not envision the situation now before us. It then describes DeShong's precise situation. [41] That the legislature was arguably not omniscient when it enacted section .187 would not give us authority to craft a remedy the legislature did not. But in this case, the words of the statute are broad enough to include DeShong's situation. It does not matter that her situation is only a subset, even one that may be unique and sympathy provoking, of the situations swept up by AS 23.30.187. This circumstance does not make the statute less applicable to her, or justify altering it. Finally, the opinion today creates a problematic legacy for legislators trying to write statutes and parties and courts trying to apply them. If this statute does not mean what it so clearly says, when will a statute ever be applied as written? What could the legislature have said to make its intentions clearer?