Opinion ID: 2603660
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Heading: CONSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE WITHIN WYOMING LAW ÔÇö WORKER'S RIGHT TO COUNSEL

Text: Prior to the 1914 amendment to Art. 10,  4, Wyoming Constitution, it was constitutional law in Wyoming that `No law shall be enacted' limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person. Markle v. Williamson, 518 P.2d 621, 622 (Wyo. 1974). The workmen's compensation provisions of 1914 automatically allowed an employer civil immunity for causing employee injury and death and, in return, not so automatically provided some compensation to an injured worker and his family if killed, even without the necessity of proving the employer negligent. One dominant characteristic of the system as it has evolved is it is still frequently highly adversarial. Defenses in the absence of the negligent component remain available and periodically effective. Under W.S. XX-XX-XXX(a) and (b), if the Workers' Compensation Division disputes the compensability of an injury, the Attorney General's office argues their point in a contested case ÔÇö a trial-type hearing ÔÇö as provided by W.S. 16-3-107(a) through (r) and continue right of appeal to this court. Similarly, if an employer objects to the compensability of the injury or death resulting from injury, W.S. XX-XX-XXX(b), a contest by representative counsel is available through W.S. 16-3-107(a) through (r). While an injured employee may or may not be indigent, most injured employees would be unable to afford an attorney to battle the Attorney General representing the Wyoming Workers' Compensation Division and also employer counsel at a time when they are unable to work and are faced with medical bills. Additionally, the employee is faced with the statutory limitation on the acquisition of counsel imposed by W.S. XX-XX-XXX. Due process, `unlike some legal rules, is not a technical conception with a fixed content unrelated to time, place and circumstances.' Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers Union, Local 473, AFL-CIO v. McElroy, 367 U.S. 886, 895, 81 S.Ct. 1743, 1748, 6 L.Ed.2d 1230, reh'g denied 368 U.S. 869, 82 S.Ct. 22, 7 L.Ed.2d 70 (1961) (quoting Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 162-63, 71 S.Ct. 624, 643, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951)). Because it is `compounded of history, reason, [and] the past course of decisions   ,' Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers Union, Local 473, AFL-CIO, 367 U.S. at 895, 81 S.Ct. at 1748 (quoting McGrath, 341 U.S. at 162-63, 71 S.Ct. at 643), the strictures which the [Due Process] Clause imposes must be tailored to fit each particular situation. Smethurst v. State, 756 P.2d 196, 202 (Wyo. 1988), Urbigkit, Justice, dissenting. While the contours of due process are flexible, the demand that due process be accorded is not flexible. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 481, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 2600, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972). The touchstone for due process is a process affording fundamental fairness. [9] Under due process, the controlling question is fundamental fairness for an injured employee to participate without the benefit of counsel in an adversarial process where other litigants can come well-armed, whether with counsel funded by the employer or provided by the Attorney General's office or both. Under federal due process analysis, counsel may well be needed to respond to opposing counsel or other forms of adversary in a trial-type proceeding,   . Walters v. National Ass'n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 333, 105 S.Ct. 3180, 3195, 87 L.Ed.2d 220 (1985) (emphasis added). But, as this court demonstrated in Lawrence-Allison and Associates West, Inc. v. Archer, 767 P.2d 989, 994-97 (Wyo. 1989), Wyoming's due process clause provides protection not accorded under the federal due process clause. Lassiter v. Department of Social Services of Durham County, North Carolina, 452 U.S. 18, 35, 101 S.Ct. 2153, 2163, 68 L.Ed.2d 640, reh'g denied 453 U.S. 927, 102 S.Ct. 889, 69 L.Ed.2d 1023 (1981). [10] Analysis of federal due process does not end the inquiry in Wyoming as to a potential violation of due process. As a number of recent State Supreme Court decisions demonstrate, a state court is entirely free to read its own State's constitution more broadly than this Court reads the Federal Constitution, or to reject the mode of analysis used by this Court in favor of a different analysis of its corresponding constitutional guarantee. City of Mesquite v. Aladdin's Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 293, 102 S.Ct. 1070, 1077, 71 L.Ed.2d 152 (1982). The flexibility of due process makes it particularly inappropriate to equate federal and Wyoming due process each time the federal courts shift the contours of due process. [11] See Keiter, An Essay on Wyoming Constitutional Interpretation, XXI Land & Water L.Rev. 527, 549 (1986). [12] To assess the status of James L. Brown, injured worker, and his right to the assistance of counsel to seek worker's compensation benefits, requires identification of the source of his right to legal assistance. The answer may not be uniformly derived from each different worker's compensation system utilized nationwide, but within the architecture of the systems individually chosen by the different states there are constitutional aspects of the right to counsel for the individual worker. Powell v. State of Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932); 75 Am.Jur.2d Trial  52 (1974). Cf. Zancanelli v. Coal and Coke Co., 25 Wyo. 511, 173 P. 981 (1918). This court can go no further than the present Wyoming system of a state monopoly fund governmentally administered, except to identify that there is a constitutional right for the worker to be represented and the lawyer to be paid for that representation. Considering the history of the program where common rights of the worker were extinguished by granted immunity to the employer, Zancanelli, 173 P. 981, it becomes apparent that a right to counsel for Wyoming workers injured within the confined rights of Wyo. Const. art. 10,  4 and the laws adopted pursuant thereto create a due process interest constitutionally guaranteed. Note, The Right to Appointed Counsel for Indigent Civil Litigants: The Demands of Due Process, 30 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 627 (1989). That right is the right to adequate assistance by a competently performing attorney. [13] Cline, 126 P.2d 1030; State in Interest of Antini, 53 N.J. 488, 251 A.2d 291 (1969). I contend that, because of the potential unfairness of such an unequal contest, the right to counsel in a worker's compensation adversarial contest is constitutionally required under Wyo. Const. art. 1,  6. See also Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 71 L.Ed.2d 599 (1982). Following assessment of the constitutional interest, our analysis considers sources for the legal assistance, e.g., public official (county attorney duty), as evidenced in earlier history in Wyoming, an organization in the nature of public defender to represent the interest of the individual against the resistance of the state, [14] or if neither of those arrangements are provided, then the private practicing attorney. That choice has been legislatively made by selection of the private lawyers. Attorney compensation next requires attention.