Opinion ID: 796062
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Intervention and the Stipulation of Subrogation Lien Agreement

Text: 20 Schneider's first attack on the district court's decision is to argue that NECS waived any lien claim by choosing not to intervene as a party in the Pennsylvania lawsuit. Schneider contends that because intervention was available to NECS as a means of achieving judicial protection of its rights, NECS's failure to intervene should preclude it from looking to the court to save it from its own procedural misstep. Schneider makes repeated reference to NECS's failure to protect its lien and argues that in the absence of affirmative action by NECS to protect its own interests, it was not incumbent upon either Schneider or Menist to look out for NECS during the settlement negotiations. 21 No doubt in hindsight NECS regrets that it withdrew its intervention motion in the Pennsylvania action. But there is nothing in the Indiana statute or its interpretive case law that makes intervention anything other than permissive; there is no authority for the proposition that intervention is a necessary prerequisite to the operation of the statutory lien rights (although it may be the most efficient way to protect those rights). Indeed, an insurer's lien rights arise by operation of the statute itself without any requirement of a positive act on the part of the insurer. Schneider acknowledged as much in its opposition to NECS's motion to intervene in the Pennsylvania suit. There, Schneider asserted as follows: It is specifically denied that the worker's compensation carrier herein must intervene to protect their [sic] subrogation rights. 22 Schneider cannot have it both ways. NECS's lien rights, and the requirement that Menist and Schneider obtain NECS's written consent to the settlement, were not dependent upon NECS's intervention in the lawsuit. NECS did not waive its lien rights by withdrawing its motion to intervene. Schneider and Menist were in no way relieved of the requirements of § 22-3-2-13 by virtue of NECS's withdrawal of its intervention motion. 23 Similarly unpersuasive is Schneider's insistence that NECS's decision to enter into the Stipulation of Subrogation Lien with Menist operated as a waiver or otherwise relieved Schneider of any obligation to comply with the requirements of the statute. It is true that Schneider was not a party to this stipulation, but the document essentially amounts to nothing more than an unnecessary agreement by Menist that he will recognize and respect the lien rights that already existed by operation of the statute, with or without any stipulation. Both Menist and Schneider were required to recognize and honor NECS's lien (to use the language of the stipulation) by virtue of the statute creating it. We fail to see why or how Menist's written agreement to respect NECS's statutory lien rights could be read as a negative injunction relieving Schneider of any duty to do so.