Opinion ID: 1128230
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: Introductory Observations

Text: As has been previously noted, Befus was a State employee whose estate was sued in a wrongful-death action by Hamlin's estate for culpable neglect in consequence of which a verdict for $150,000 against the Befus estate was returned. The Befus estate seeks indemnity and asks to be held harmless by the State of Wyoming under § 1-39-104(b) (see n. 3). The State contends that Befus' claim against the State must fail since Befus was an employee of the State and covered by worker's compensation at the time of the mishap and, in these circumstances, the employer State of Wyoming is absolutely immune from its employee's suit by reason of the exclusive-remedy provisions of the Wyoming worker's compensation law. [15] Rationale for Decision on Issue No. 1 We have previously noted briefly in this opinion that the clear language of Art. 10, § 4 and § 27-12-103(a) (see n. 7) leaves no room for any conclusion, with respect to the scope of the worker's compensation employer's immunity provisions, excepting that the protection contemplated by these provisions of our Constitution and statutes protects the contributing employer from personal-injury and/or wrongful-death suits only. Pan American Petroleum Corporation v. Maddux Well Service, supra. In support of this conclusion, it is to be observed that the purpose of the amendment to Art. 10, § 4 [16] was  in the case of injured or deceased employees  to furnish an exception to the proscriptions of that constitutional provision which held that [n]o law shall be enacted limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person. (Emphasis added.) The effect of the amendment was to enable the passage of legislation which would authorize the establishment of an industrial-accident fund  financed by industry and underwritten by the State [17]  from which the families of deceased employees and employees injured while engaged in extrahazardous employment would be compensated according to amounts previously determined by the legislature. In Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., 25 Wyo. 511, 173 P. 981 (1918), we analogized the employer's obligation to contribute to the industrial-accident fund to the corollary duty of an employer to contribute to an industrial-insurance plan in exchange for immunity from tort action and the employee's limited right to claim industrial-injury benefits from the insurer. In Zancanelli, we said  and have reaffirmed ever since  that our worker's compensation law is in the nature of an industrial-insurance act. There can be no doubt but that the worker's compensation law (see n. 7) contemplated that the employer's immunity was a trade off in which the employee agreed, through legislative enactment, to forego the right to bring personal-injury and wrongful-death actions in return for the contributions by the employers to a fund from which benefits would be paid to injured, and the estates of deceased, employees without reference to any but culpable fault. We summarized these concepts in Baker v. Wendy's of Montana, Inc., supra, when we said: Following the amendment to Art. 10, § 4, the legislature enacted a worker's compensation law which was the legislative embodiment of a compromise between employers and employees who recognized the need for a new system to compensate employees for employment-related injuries without the employee having to rely upon tort concepts. Meyer v. Kendig, Wyo., 641 P.2d 1235, 1237 (1982). See also Barnette v. Doyle, Wyo., 622 P.2d 1349 (1981); Stephenson v. Mitchell, Wyo., 569 P.2d 95 (1977); Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., 25 Wyo. 511, 173 P. 981 (1918). The statutory trade-off for the employers contributing to the fund on behalf of their employees was the provision which gave the employer immunity from `all other rights and remedies' (§ 27-12-103(a), supra) which the injured employee might theretofore have possessed. In return, the covered employees and their dependent heirs received the benefit of rapid and certain relief for work-related injuries and death in exchange for forgoing their right to bring common-law actions in tort against their employers who were contributing to their accounts in the worker's compensation fund. Meyer v. Kendig, supra, 641 P.2d at 1238; Mauch v. Stanley Structures, Inc., Wyo., 641 P.2d 1247, 1249 (1982); Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., supra, 173 P. at 988. The nature of the law in question is that of an industrial insurance act. This court originally placed this interpretation upon Wyoming's Worker's Compensation Act in Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., supra, and we have consistently reiterated this view. Meyer v. Kendig, supra; Bence v. Pacific Power and Light Company, Wyo., 631 P.2d 13 (1981); Barnette v. Doyle, supra; Markle v. Williamson, Wyo., 518 P.2d 621 (1974). The industrial-insurance concept evolved from the proposition that industrial accidents are a cost of production and should be borne by the industry. Zancanelli v. Central Coal & Coke Co., supra, 173 P. at 989. (Emphasis added.) 687 P.2d at 887-888. We went on to say: For all the same reasons that an employer may not avoid paying a compensation claim where the worker is injured through his or her own ordinary negligence, the worker does not have a tort action against the employer when he (or it) is negligent and the worker is covered. This is so because the act creates liability without fault on the part of the contributing employer and likewise provides the employer with absolute immunity from tort actions including the employer's violation of his duty of care whether the negligence is ordinary or culpable. Mauch v. Stanley Structures, Inc., supra, 641 P.2d at 1250; Barnette v. Doyle, supra, 622 P.2d at 1352. This is to say that immunity is absolute. Mauch v. Stanley Structures, Inc., supra, 641 P.2d at 1252 (Rose, C.J., specially concurring). (Emphasis added.) 687 P.2d at 888. From these holdings  long established  it therefore follows that the employer's exclusive immunity from suit of which the worker's compensation law speaks (see n. 7) is immunity from common-law wrongful-death and personal-injury litigation. This means that employees are not precluded from bringing suit against their employers in contract and other forms of action excepting only where any causes of action lodged by an employee against his contributing employer are couched in tort. These holdings also mean that the legislature, by its submission of the restrictive worker's compensation constitutional amendment to the people for their approval, did not intend to foreclose or inhibit its own authority to enact subsequent legislation which would have the effect of managing the rights, remedies and immunities pertaining to governmental entities and their employees. It must therefore be concluded that the people of Wyoming, by authorizing the worker's compensation amendment, did not intend in any way to affect the common-law or statutory rights of employees to bring their various authorized causes of action against their employers except where personal injury or wrongful death is in issue. It is, therefore, logical to assume that, since the worker's compensation employer immunity only contemplates that the employer will be protected from tort actions, a provision of law  such as § 1-39-104(b) (see n. 3)  which directs that the State employer hold harmless a State-covered employee whose sovereign immunity has been removed by statute and who is not suing the employer in tort but is claiming rights to be protected from negligent-employee verdicts under a statutory-indemnity contract  will not be found to be in conflict with the worker's compensation employer-immunity provisions of the Wyoming Constitution and supporting statutes. This assumption argues for a conclusion in this litigation which says that, since the covered employee's claim is founded in a statutory indemnity contract and is neither directly nor indirectly a claim against the State employer for wrongful-death damages, it must have been the intention of the legislature, when enacting the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act which removes the immunity of State employee Befus, to mean what it said when it made its promise to indemnify and hold harmless. [w]hen liability is alleged against any public employee   . (Emphasis added.) Section 1-39-104(b). We therefore hold that the worker's compensation exclusive-remedy provisions of the Constitution and statutes do not deny standing to an employee in Befus' position to bring suit against the State of Wyoming in statutory contract for indemnity.