Opinion ID: 72032
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The LHWCA was enacted as a substitute for tort claims

Text: Unlike the NLRA, but like most workers' compensation statutes, the LHWCA's remedial scheme is a substitute for the tort claims that an injured employee could otherwise bring against his employer. Indeed, the LHWCA specifies that an employer's liability under the statute is exclusive and in place of all other liability of such employer to the employee... [61] Only if the employer fails to secure payment of compensation may an eligible employee maintain an action at law or in admiralty for damages. [62] Therefore, under the quid pro quo of the LHWCA, an employee who is eligible for benefits is stripped of his right to sue at law or in admiralty in exchange for gaining a certain, but limited, recovery under a strict liability regime. [63] As the Supreme Court has explained, the LHWCA represents a compromise between the competing interests of disabled laborers and their employers. The use of a schedule of fixed benefits as an exclusive remedy in certain cases is consistent with the employees' interest in receiving a prompt and certain recovery for their industrial injuries as well as with the employers' interest in having their contingent liabilities identified as precisely and as early as possible. [64] As we have previously held in Hernandez that an undocumented immigrant employed as a longshoreman has the right to sue a vessel owner in tort for negligence, it follows that Rodriguez must have the corresponding right, viz., the right to recover workers' compensation benefits under the LHWCA. [65] Indeed, the remedy provided by the LHWCA is merely a substitute for the negligence claim that an employee could otherwise bring against his employer in tort. As one court has observed, it would not only be illogical but it would also serve no discernable purpose to accord illegal aliens the right to bring affirmative claims in tort for personal injury but deny them the right to pursue the substitutionary remedy for personal injuries sustained in the workplace. [66] In a closely analogous case, the Court of Appeals of New York held that a minor employee who had lied about his age to obtain employment could not sue his employer in tort because the employeedespite his illegal act in falsifying his age was covered by that state's workers' compensation statute, which contained an exclusivity provision protecting the employer from liability in tort. [67] This venerable holding remains unchanged and is particularly relevant today: As the Supreme Court has noted, the LHWCA was largely patterned on New York's workers' compensation statute. [68] Thus, in Mellen v. H.B. Hirsch & Sons, Inc., the D.C. Circuit looked to New York law to determine whether an illegally-employed minor working as a longshoreman could sue his employer in tort. [69] Basing its analysis largely on New York courts' interpretations of that state's workers' compensation statute, the court in Mellen held that the minor despite having subverted child labor laws to obtain employmentwas covered under the LHWCA and was thus subject to the LHWCA's exclusivity provision barring him from proceeding in tort. [70]