Opinion ID: 1960793
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: special fund for second or successive injuries

Text: This court has previously described the function and purpose of the special fund for second or successive injuries. See Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 704 A.2d 295 (D.C.1997) ( WMATA ); John Driggs Corp. v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 632 A.2d 740 (D.C.1993). Only a brief review is required. This fund provides partial reimbursement to an employer when that employer pays workers' compensation benefits to an employee whose injury has combined with a previous occupational or nonoccupational disability or physical impairment caus[ing] substantially greater disability or death. § 32-1508(6). [2] The fund came into existence on July 24, 1982, when the District of Columbia Workers' Compensation Act replaced the federal Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act as the law governing workers' compensation claims in the District of Columbia. [3] Lee v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 509 A.2d 100, 103 (D.C.1986). The special fund provision was modeled after its federal forerunner in the Longshoremen's Act, 33 U.S.C. § 908(f), and the provisions were meant to be functionally equivalent. Driggs, supra, 632 A.2d at 743 & n. 8. The purpose of the special fund, like that of its federal predecessor, is to prevent and reduce employment discrimination based on the risk of disability-related [liability]. WMATA, supra, 704 A.2d at 298 (citing Dir., Office of Workers' Comp. Programs v. Berkstresser, 287 U.S.App. D.C. 266, 270, 921 F.2d 306, 310 (1990)). More precisely, the fund was established to eliminate a specific financial incentive not to hire or retain previously injured workersan incentive inadvertently created by the workers' compensation statutory scheme itself. Driggs, supra, 632 A.2d at 746 (the purpose of the fund is simply to remove that aspect of discrimination against the disabled which would otherwise be encouraged by the very statute intended to protect them) (citing American Mut. Ins. Co. of Boston v. Jones, 138 U.S.App. D.C. 269, 273, 426 F.2d 1263, 1267 (1970)); WMATA, supra, 704 A.2d at 299 (the sole purpose of the Special Fund is to remove the employer's incentive to discriminate against the disabled). The perverse incentive to engage in such discrimination arose because the basic statutory scheme of workers' compensation requires an employer to take full responsibility for compensating an employee when that employee has been injured on the job. 5 ARTHUR LARSON & LEX K. LARSON, LARSON'S WORKERS' COMPENSATION LAW § 90-01 (2002) (hereinafter LARSON). Under this full responsibility rule, a previously injured employee presents a risk of greater liability to an employer than a healthy employee does. WMATA, supra, 704 A.2d at 297. For example, the loss of an eye, which would ordinarily mean only partial disability for a normal worker, results in total disability for a worker who has already lost his other eye. LARSON, supra, § 90-01; see Lawson v. Suwannee Fruit & S.S. Co., 336 U.S. 198, 69 S.Ct. 503, 93 L.Ed. 611 (1949). Whether the employer in this example is liable for partial or total disability depends entirely on whether the injured worker has been injured before. In this way, in the absence of a special fund provision, the basic statutory scheme would create a financial incentive for employers not to hire or retain previously injured workers. WMATA, supra, 704 A.2d at 297. The special fund, like the federal second injury fund, was designed to eliminate the incentive to discriminate described above. Under a basic second injury statute, an employee receives full disability benefits from the employer, but the employer is reimbursed for all benefits paid in excess of those flowing from the subsequent injury alone. [4] Id. A bare apportionment statute, which would also limit an employer's liability to the subsequent injury alone, would likewise eliminate the financial incentive to discriminate, but it would not ensure that the injured employee receives full disability benefits. Id. Second injury funds are, therefore, the preferred solution to the perverse incentive engendered by the basic workers' compensation statutory scheme. Id. In sum, the local special fund and its federal counterpart were created for the narrow purpose of eliminating this financial incentive for employers to discriminate against previously injured workers in the process of determining whether a worker should be hired or retained.