Opinion ID: 2086616
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Court states:

Text: There can be but one claim for total and permanent disability. Although the statute recognizes seven alternative bases for it, evidence establishing more than one basis would occasion only one award. One can agree that there can be only one award for total and permanent disability without concluding that there can be but one claim for such compensation arising from a single accident. Generally, there is but one right to compensation for a loss. A judgment successful in securing compensation will merge with the loss. This is so not because a plaintiff is entitled to only one chance to secure damages but because he is entitled to be compensated only once. A claim which would not have been barred had the plaintiff failed may nevertheless be merged in the judgment should he prevail. [11] The question before us is whether a claim will be barred where the plaintiff has failed in a prior suit, and this requires that we determine if the second suit is based on the same claim. The Court continues: Gose's second petition, although upon a different basis (insanity instead of industrial loss of use of both legs), nonetheless seeks compensation for the same claim of total and permanent disability arising from injury to his left ankle. He was obligated to advance in a single proceeding every alternative basis which could support this claim. Gose was obligated to advance in a single proceeding every alternative basis which could support this claim only if there was truly one claim. Under the workers' compensation act a cause of action or claim is the sustaining of a compensable disability by the employee. Compensable disabilities are strictly and narrowly defined by the act and are the basis of any entitlement. An accident resulting in an injury gives rise to no right to compensation unless a compensable disability ensues. The Court defines the claim as one of total and permanent disability arising from injury to his left ankle.  (Emphasis supplied.) There is, however, no such claim. Gose suffered an injury to his left ankle, and may have been totally and permanently disabled in fact as a result, but he would have had no claim to differential/800-week conclusive presumption benefits for total and permanent disability arising from injury to his left ankle unless he sustained a disability specifically enumerated in the pertinent section of the act, e.g., loss of industrial use of both legs or incurable insanity. Suppose a worker suffers a totally disabling occupational disease which also causes him to lose industrial use of both legs. He can, under the occupational disease section, petition for general total disability benefits; if he prevails he cannot by claiming total and permanent disability collect further compensation from his employer for the total disability (although such a claim may entitle him to differential benefits from the Second Injury Fund). He has suffered one total disability and can recover only one award for that loss. He has, however, suffered the disability under circumstances which give rise to two claims. Because he makes claims asserting distinct statutory entitlements, his inability to prove one claim is no bar to his assertion of the other although he bases both claims on the same injury. In the one case he seeks to prove a total disability due to causes and conditions which are characteristic of and peculiar to the business of the employer and hence a right to compensation under ch 4 of the act. In the other he seeks to prove a work-related permanent and total loss of industrial use of both legs and thus a right to compensation under ch 3. If it is determined in his first suit that his disability is work-related but is not an occupational disease or disability, relitigation of those issues is precluded but that does not preclude the other claim  a claim for permanent and total loss of industrial use of both legs. Gose's claim based on insanity is no less a separate claim because it is derived from the same statutory section as his prior claim. In the one case he seeks to prove work-related loss of use of both legs, in the other work-related insanity. Gose's accident allegedly caused two compensable disabilities and, therefore, he had two claims. He was under no obligation to litigate them together. [12]