Opinion ID: 1679652
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Basis for Computing Compensation

Text: The Commission, by correction order dated January 19, 1978 awarded respondent, inter alia, $2,686.74 for 28 2/7 weeks healing period at the maximum compensation rate of $95.00 per week and $4,500.00 for 60 weeks permanent partial disability at the maximum compensation rate of $75.00 per week. See § 287.160, § 287.180 and § 287.190 RSMo 1975 Supp. The second issue before this court is whether such an award was based on evidence properly before the Commission. At the second hearing before the referee to hear additional evidence regarding respondent's applicable wage rate, claimant's Exhibit No. 2 was offered into evidence but was not admitted when the referee sustained appellants' objection. The exhibit before us is a photostatic copy (substituted by agreement for the original document offered in evidence) of a two page document entitled Wage Determination No. 22848A, Cole County, stamped Filed with Secretary of State, JUL 29 1975. It purports to list building construction rates for Cole County for workers on an Intrusion Detection System on the Missouri National Guard Building & Grounds, Jefferson City, including laborers (building-common), semi-skilled. The schedule was issued July 10, 1975. It shows that such a laborer made $6.90 per hour and that structural iron workers made $8.975 an hour. [2] As said, the exhibit was not admitted into evidence by the referee. The Commission sua sponte found the exhibit to be an official document of this department, filed with the Secretary of State, and we take administrative notice of it. The dissenting judge found the Commission's action appropriate and cited § 536.070(6) RSMo 1978, which provides as follows: Agencies shall take official notice of all matters of which the courts take judicial notice. They may also take official notice of technical or scientific facts, not judicially cognizable, within their competence, if they notify the parties, either during a hearing or in writing before a hearing, or before findings are made after hearing of the facts of which they propose to take such notice and give the parties reasonable opportunity to contest such facts or otherwise show that it would not be proper for the agency to take such notice of them. Appellants contend that § 536.070(6) does not apply to workmen's compensation cases. We have held that the review provisions of chapter 536 do not apply to review of workmen's compensation decisions, Scott v. Wheelock Bros., 357 Mo. 480, 209 S.W.2d 149, 150 (banc 1948), but we have not passed on the present point. We agree that § 536.070(6) does not apply to workmen's compensation cases. The system of a workmen's compensation commission with workmen's compensation referees, as it was first set up, § 3299 et seq., RSMo 1929, now embodied in a Division of Workmen's Compensation and a Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, § 287.010 et seq., RSMo 1978, is one which is more like a court than it is a regulatory agency. The Commission, like a court, is passive. It has no obligation to search for evidence which parties fail to present. A regulatory agency has an affirmative duty to carry out a program, to protect a public interest which frequently is otherwise unrepresented. When parties fail to produce needed facts, the regulatory agency typically must take the initiative in aggressively making its own factual investigation. Davis Official Notice, 62 Harv.L.Rev. 537, 538 (1949). Professor Davis points out further differences: Unlike a court, a regulatory agency employs staffs of specialists, wields independent powers of investigation, and accumulates vast storehouses of information about its specialized field. The scope of judicial notice has been molded largely on the basis of information readily available to a court .... Information to be noticed by one tribunal, the regulatory agency, should not depend upon facts available to another tribunal, the court. Id. 538. On this same general subject, A. Larson, Workmen's Compensation 15-33715-338, § 79.90 (1976), points out that [T]he compensation commission while deciding controverted claims is as far toward the judical [sic] end of the spectrum as it is possible to go without being an outright court. Accordingly, investigatory procedures or rules of official notice that might be appropriate for a regulatory agency primarily concerned with implementing some public policy while incidentally settling a dispute between particular parties may not be entirely appropriate for a compensation board. We do not believe it is appropriate for the adjudicatory body in a workmen's compensation proceeding, which operates with parties before it in adversarial positions, the employee on one side and the employer-insurer on the other hand, to be taking official notice of facts not judicially cognizable, under the procedure set forth in § 536.070(6). This would be too much in the nature of the Commission's leaving its neutral position and helping one side or the other with evidence. We believe the Commission and its referees are limited to ascertaining the facts from the record presented by the parties and applying the workmen's compensation law to the facts. This, of course, does not mean the Commission cannot employ regular judicial notice when it is proper under the rules of evidence to do so. We therefore hold that Exhibit No. 2 was not admissible as something of which the Commission could take official notice under § 536.070(6), RSMo 1978. [3] As the dissenting judge points out, there was other evidence as to wages. The Commission's findings in this regard read as follows: Father Flanagan was pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church. At Tr. 140, he stated that in case wages were paid to individuals for their labor the wages were based generally on the goodwill of the person who was doing the construction work. It was understood that it would be the lowest pay possible. He stated that the volunteers could, if they wished, have their services credited against their tithing. Fred Verslues, foreman, was paid $5.50 per hour. Bill Bax was paid $4.50 per hour. Tom Verslues, son of the foreman, was paid $2.00 per hour. However, as pointed out by Father Flanagan, these rates paid are in no way indicative of rates being paid to adults engaged in the same kind of employment. .... We find the exhibit [referring to Exhibit No. 2] is a copy of a wage determination issued on July 10, 1975 by the Division of Labor Standards, a division of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, as required by chapter 290 of the Statutes of Missouri. We find it is an official document of this department, filed with the Secretary of State, and we take administrative notice of it. Giving it the consideration we think it deserves, we note it indicates the lowest basic hourly wage paid for building labor in Cole County, that of a common laborer, to be $6.90 per hour. We do not find it necessary to determine whether the claimant was doing work coming under the classification of ironworker, or laborer, as the rate indicated in Wage Determination # 22848A for the lowest of the two classifications, that of a common laborer at $6.90 per hour, would according to Section 287.250(3) Revised Statutes of Missouri 1969 amply support a finding that the claimant is entitled to benefits based upon the maximum rate. To find otherwise would be to find that his services were worth less than $4.00 per hour which, based upon the testimony of Father Flanagan, would appear to be ridiculous. Appellants are entitled to insist, as they do, that respondent's compensation rate be determined as required by the act. [T]he rule of liberal construction does not authorize the allowance of a claim which lacks some of the essential elements required by the act. Glazebrook v. Hazelwood School District, 498 S.W.2d 823, 826 (Mo.App.1973). Section 287.250, RSMo 1978 prescribes how compensation is computed. It has ten subsections. [I]t is necessary to commence with the first subsection and then to descend in numerical order under the other subsections until the wage rate provision is found that applies to the particular facts of the case. Glazebrook, supra at 826; Cross v. Crabtree, 364 S.W.2d 61, 67 (Mo.App.1962). The Commission used § 287.250(3) as the method of determining respondent's compensation rate, but subsection 3 does not apply, as it has been construed to apply to employees who accept employment which normally requires services for a full year and are then injured prior to the expiration of one year after they were employed. Glazebrook, supra at 827. Respondent's situation does not fit subsection 3. His expectations with regard to his volunteer work did not extend for a full year, and, of course, he worked less than a day before being injured. Additionally, there is no evidence in this case of annual earnings of other persons in the same class of work in that location or in neighboring employments of the same kind. Subsection 3 is not applicable. The subsection which fits respondent is § 287.250(6). It deals with injured employees who receive no wages and reads as follows: In the case of injured employees who earn either no wage or less than the earnings of adult day laborers in the line of employment in that locality, the yearly wage shall be reckoned according to the average annual earnings of adults of the same class in the same (or if that is impracticable then of neighboring) employments. Since Exhibit No. 2 was improperly considered, the only other evidence referred to was the hourly wages paid to Fred Verslues, Bill Bax, and Tom Verslues. Subsection 6, the method to be used for those who earn no wage or earn less than adult day laborers in the same locality, calls for determining the yearly wage of the claimant according to the average annual earnings of adults of the same class in the same (or if that is impracticable then of neighboring) employments. Respondent probably could be considered in the same class as Bill Bax, even though Bax was being paid an hourly wage and respondent was not. Both were doing common labor. One trouble with attempting to use Bax's rate of $4.50 per hour is that when the comparison method of computation of earning capacity under subsection 6 is used it has been held to require ascertainment of the annual earnings which adultsi. e., more than one employeein the same employment have earned. Fear v. Ebony Paint Manufacturing Co., 238 Mo. App. 560, 181 S.W.2d 559, 564 (1944); Werner v. Pioneer Cooperage Co., 155 S.W.2d 319, 322 (Mo.App.1941). There is no evidence in the record of the annual earnings of any adults in this case. The Commission's award is affirmed except with respect to the amount of compensation, as to which it is reversed and the cause remanded to the circuit court with directions to remand to the Commission for further proceedings relative to determination of the amount of compensation consistent with this opinion. RENDLEN, MORGAN and HIGGINS, JJ., concur. BARDGETT, C. J., concurs in result. DONNELLY, J., dissents in separate dissenting opinion filed. WELLIVER, J., dissents and concurs in separate dissenting opinion of DONNELLY, J. DONNELLY, Judge, dissenting. I respectfully dissent. I have serious reservations as to whether the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission's findings of fact are sufficient to support its conclusion that respondent was an employee under the Worker's Compensation Act. In any event, I would reverse because I believe the principal opinion in this case represents another farfetched application of the term appointment found in § 287.020, RSMo 1978. See 1C Larson, Workmen's Compensation Law, § 47.41(a), 8-261 (1980).