Opinion ID: 1245439
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the constitutional questions presented

Text: The first two sentences of Article 10, Section 4, of the Wyoming Constitution prohibit the enactment of any law which limits the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person, and voids contracts which waive the rights of an employee to recover damages for injury or death. The remainder of Article 10, Section 4, is an exception to these provisions and was added as an amendment and approved in 1914, thereby paving the way for a workmen's compensation statute enacted by the legislature in 1915. The amendment made no provision for the fund to receive contributions from or be reimbursed by monies recovered by the employee from negligent third persons, and, furthermore, did not contemplate that the fund would, under any circumstances, receive any manner of financial underwriting from the injured employee or the heirs of a deceased employee. Under the new industrial-accident-fund concept, the worker's contribution to the plan was not to take the form of financial fund-reimbursement but  as we will see  was to be expressed as the giving up of his common-law rights of action against the contributing employer. The act of 1915 contemplated that only the State's general fund and the employer would contribute to the fund  not the employee !!! The purpose of the amendment, as expressed by Chapter 124, Session Laws of Wyoming 1915, was to authorize the establishment of an Industrial Accident Fund  financed by industry and underwritten by the State  from which employees injured while engaged in extra-hazardous employment would be paid compensation according to amounts predetermined by the legislature, that is, so much for a finger  so much for a hand  an arm  a leg  a life, etc. [1] The worker's right to claim benefits and receive compensation from this fund is now (but has not always been) automatic; but it is now and always has been an exclusive remedy as between the employee and the contributing employer, with the employer receiving absolute immunity from any tort action which might otherwise have been brought by the worker. [2] Payments from the fund cannot now be defeated except where the injury is occasioned by the sole culpable negligence of the claiming worker. This also has not always been true, as I will point out in this dissent. According to § 27-54, supra, which was in effect when the appellant was injured, the legislature, in 1951, provided for the reimbursement of the contributing employer's account from personal-injury and death damages recovered from negligent third parties by the injured employee or his heirs. Since the workmen's-compensation exception to the original Article 10, Section 4, makes no provision for reimbursement to the employer's account in the Industrial Accident Fund from his employee's third-party recovery, the questions become these: 1. Is the requirement which causes the employee to reimburse the account of the employer a limitation (limiting) upon the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person.? (First sentence, Article 10, Section 4, Wyoming Constitution, supra.) 2. Is the reimbursement requirement a statutory contract with any employee waiving any right to recover damages for causing the death or injury of any employee... .? (Second sentence, Article 10, Section 4, Wyoming Constitution, supra.) 3. Is the reimbursement requirement in excess of the police power of the State and, therefore, violative of the employee's Federal and State constitutional right to not be deprived of his property without due process of law? If the answer to any one of the above is in the affirmative, then the provisions of § 27-54, supra, are unconstitutional. When considering whether or not § 27-54 is a law limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person, we must keep in mind that § 27-54 does these following things: 1. It delivers total control of, and a lien upon, the employee's third-party-recovery damages to the State and, in so doing, 2. It provides that the employee may deduct one-third of the third-party recovery to cover costs. 3. It provides that one-third of the remainder of the recovery will be paid to the injured employee or the heirs of a deceased worker. 4. It provides that out of the balance remaining, the contributing employer's accident-fund account shall be reimbursed  if the balance is sufficient to do that. 5. If the last-mentioned balance (4 above) is insufficient to wholly reimburse the fund account, then all of such balance will be applied to partially reimburse the fund. 6. If there are any monies remaining after complying with the above-enumerated fund-reimbursement provisions, then the remainder will go to the injured employee or the deceased employee's heirs. In order to contemplate the question of whether the State has the power to take the property of the employee and use it to reimburse the employer's account in the Industrial Accident Fund, we must searchingly inquire into the nature, purpose and history of the act, together with this court's assessment of it. This is so because the State's authority to take the property of the injured workman (i.e., his damage monies) must come from its police power under conditions where the power is unrestricted either by Article 10, Section 4, of the Wyoming Constitution or the due-process clauses of the Federal or State Constitutions, and in circumstances whereby the State's police power is unimpeded by any other constitutional restraints. State v. Langley, 53 Wyo. 332, 84 P.2d 767, 770.