Opinion ID: 1658371
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Solidarity

Text: Under a proper interpretation of the occupational disease provisions, bearing in mind the policy of liberal statutory construction, the emerging principle of imposition of solidary liability upon multiple employers, and the compromise character of compensation, we conclude that any employer whose employment of a claimant has contributed causally to his disabling occupational disease is solidarily obliged to him fully for workers' compensation. The policy of liberal construction of the workers' compensation laws for the benefit of the claimant is the rule in Louisiana. Lester v. Southern Casualty Insurance Company, 466 So.2d 25 (La.1985); Danielson v. Security Van Lines, Inc., 158 So.2d 609 (La.1963); Wallace v. Remington Rand, Inc., 229 La. 651, 86 So.2d 522 (1956); Jones v. Hunsicker, 188 La. 468, 177 So. 576 (1937). It is an emerging general principle of our workers' compensation law that, where succeeding employments contribute to disability, compensation liability falls solidarily on each succeeding employer. Thus, it has been held that when a worker is disabled as a result of the combination of two or more successive accidents in separate and succeeding employments each employer is solidarily liable for the total amount of benefits. The employee may, at his option, obtain an award for the entire disability against any one or more of successive employers whose employment contributed to the disability. Finley v. Hardware Mutual Ins. Co., 110 So.2d 583 (La. 1959); Wheat v. Ford, Bacon & Davis Constr. Corp., 424 So.2d 293 (La.App. 1st Cir.1982); Lachney v. Employers Commercial Union Insurance Companies, 337 So.2d 624 (La.App. 4th Cir.1976); Landry v. Bituminous Cas. Co., 244 So.2d 105 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1971); Stockstill v. Bituminous Cas. Co., 144 So.2d 918 (La.App. 4th Cir.1962); Estillette v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company Co., 64 So.2d 878 (La.App. 1st Cir.1953); Brock v. Jones Laughlin Supply Co., 39 So.2d 904 (La.App. 1st Cir.1949); White v. Taylor, 5 So.2d 337 (La.App. 2nd Cir.1941); Guillory v. Travelers Insurance Company, 282 So.2d 600 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1973), rev'd on other grounds, 294 So.2d 215 (La.1974); Meche v. Arthur G. McKee & Company, Inc., 415 So.2d 494 (La.App. 1st Cir.1982); Malone & Johnson, supra, Workers' Compensation Law and Practice, 2d ed., § 60 (1980 and supp. 1986) and Malone, Torts & Workmen's Compensation, 20 La.L.Rev. 245, 252 (1960). According to the same principle, when the claimant shows that some indications of an accident appeared on one job, and its final development occurred on another, solidary liability is appropriate because the employment with each employer contributed to the employee's death. Blount v. Cooper Stevedoring Co., 416 So.2d 358 (4th Cir.1982) cert. denied 420 So.2d 457 (La.1982). See Malone & Johnson, Worker's Compensation § 60 (Supp. 1986). Likewise, in every instance outside the successive employer situation in which a stricken employee has a relationship with more than one employer, our courts have construed the workers' compensation laws to impose solidary liability upon each employer for performance of the compensation obligation whenever there was a rational connection between the employment and disability. An injured worker may recover compensation from either his statutory or direct employer, each being bound solidarily for the entire amount of compensation owed. Jones v. Southern Tupelo Lumber Co., 257 La. 869, 244 So.2d 815 (1971); Travelers Ins. Co. v. Paramount Drilling, 395 So.2d 849 (La.App. 2nd Cir.1981); Miller v. Continental Cas. Co., 146 So.2d 842 (La.App.3rd Cir.1962). Solidary liability for compensation is also imposed on both the general and special employer under the borrowed servant doctrine. Maryland Cas. Co. v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 254 La. 489, 224 So.2d 465 (1969); Humphreys v. Marquette Cas. Co., 103 So.2d 895 (La.1958); Smith v. Kelly Labor Service, 239 So.2d 685 (La.App. 4th Cir.1970); Travelers Ins. Co. v. Paramount Drilling Co., supra . Similarly, solidary liability is imposed for compensation benefits where there are joint employers. Fontenot v. Town of Kinder, 377 So.2d 554 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1979), cert. denied, 379 So.2d 1102 (La.1980) and Continental Insurance Company v. Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, 350 So.2d 183 (La.App. 4th Cir.1977), or where the employers are engaged in a joint enterprise, McGregor v. United Film Corporation, 351 So.2d 1224 (La.App. 1st Cir.1977), cert. denied 353 So.2d 1335 (La.1978) and Guilbeau v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, 324 So.2d 571 (La.App. 1st Cir.1975), affirmed, 338 So.2d 600 (La.1976). Workers' compensation represents a compromise in which employer and worker each surrender certain advantages in order to gain others more important to him and to society. The employer gives up the immunity he otherwise would enjoy in cases where he is not at fault, and the employee surrenders his former right to full damages and accepts instead a more modest claim for bare essentials, represented by compensation. Malone & Johnson, Workers Comp. § 32. Therefore, the statute should be interpreted with this quid pro quo in mind. The occupational disease section provides that the rights and remedies granted therein to an employee or his dependent on account of an occupational disease shall be exclusive of all other rights. La.R.S. 23:1031.1. The section may be reasonably construed so as to incorporate the compensation compromise: the employee exchanges damage claims for compensation claims against all previous employers who contributed to his occupational disease; the previous employers strike a reciprocal bargain, and are granted immunity from tort suits. See Lowery v. McCormick Asbestos Co., 300 Md. 28, 475 A.2d 1168 (1984); Farrall v. Armstrong Cork Co., 457 A.2d 763 (Del.App.1983). If the section is not construed reasonably so as to grant an employee afflicted with occupational disease a workers' compensation action against each employer during whose employment he was injuriously exposed to a cause of the disease, the employee must be allowed to recover full damages from those employers immune from compensation responsibility, or else the employee would have been forced to surrender his right to full damage without a reasonable quid pro quo. Each of these reasons is sufficient to convince us that the workers' compensation laws should be interpreted, when reasonably possible, to give an employee suffering from an actionable occupational disease the right to demand the whole performance of the compensation obligation from each person whose employment contributed to his disability. Collectively, these principles and policies overwhelmingly persuade us that the legislature has given us no reason to adopt a contrary interpretation which would only tend to thwart a deserving claimant's complete and speedy recovery.