Opinion ID: 2216252
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Employer's burden to show available retraining or rehabilitation.

Text: With no regular, continuous work available to Spitzack, the issue then turned on whether he could be retrained or rehabilitated so as to become employable. The Department held that a rehabilitation requirement may be imposed in odd-lot cases, reasoning that permanent disability should not be granted if a person can be restored to suitable employment. In approving the Department's rationale the circuit court stated: Although not grounded on specific authority, the Department's application of a rehabilitation requirement is a logical and well reasoned restriction on the odd-lot doctrine. It recognizes that employers are required to provide rehabilitation benefits. SDCL 62-4-5.1. More importantly, the failure to recognize such a requirement would encourage injured employees to remain unemployed and collect lifetime benefits even though a reasonable rehabilitation program would restore them to suitable, substantial and gainful employment. The latter result is contrary to public policy and the purposes underlying the odd-lot doctrine. Whose burden then is it to establish that rehabilitation or retraining is available or unavailable, considering a claimant's restrictions? The Department has on previous cases [] placed the burden on claimants and did so on this occasion as well. The Department noted that Claimant has not ever registered with Rehabilitation Services, and his contacts with rehabilitation experts of any kind have been limited by his attorney. It is concluded that while Claimant has established a reasonable job search effort, he has not proven that he has made reasonable attempts at vocational rehabilitation or that rehabilitation would not be available to him, by a preponderance of the evidence. The circuit court disagreed. Analogizing from rehabilitation benefits cases the court wrote: After an employee makes a prima facie showing of the unavailability of suitable employment, the defending employer must show that the employee would be capable of finding employment without rehabilitation.... It follows that where the availability of rehabilitation is in issue, the claimant should retain the initial burden of making a prima facie showing of the unavailability of suitable employment. Where the employee has made his or her prima facie showing and the employer asserts that a program of rehabilitation is available, the burden should not, however, shift again to the claimant to affirmatively prove the negative; that is, that no reasonable program of rehabilitation or retraining program is available. In Cozine v. Midwest Coast Transport, Inc., 454 N.W.2d 548 (S.D.1990), the claimant requested vocational rehabilitation in order to find suitable employment following her injury; the employer argued that she could find a job without retraining. We held that under the odd-lot test for determining total disability, once an employee has made a prima facie showing that suitable employment is unavailable, the employer then has the burden of establishing that the employee would be capable of finding such employment without rehabilitation. Id. at 554. Once a claimant establishes inability to find suitable employment, the employer is left to show that job opportunities exist in the competitive market. Logically, if an employer asserts that jobs are available to a claimant upon retraining or rehabilitating, then the employer must prove such assertion by establishing that retraining or rehabilitation is a reasonable means of restoring the claimant to suitable employment. Spitzack met the prima facie requirement for odd-lot inclusion. Thereafter, the Department erred in concluding that Spitzack then had the burden to show that rehabilitation would not be successful or was unavailable. Hobelsberger, 181 N.W.2d at 459. The Employer asserts that should this Court hold the burden was on Employer, then the case should be remanded so there is a fair opportunity to undertake this burden. At the administrative hearing, Employer was acting on the belief that the burden of proving the utility of rehabilitation rested on Spitzack. Department policy apparently allocated that burden to claimants in previous administrative decisions. Though Employer did not believe it was required to offer rehabilitation evidence, Bailie and McDonald nonetheless opined that retraining was a feasible option for Spitzack. The circuit court decided not to remand the matter to the Department because the only record evidence supporting a conclusion of available rehabilitation was the Employer's depositions of Jeff Bailie and Shari McDonald. Reviewing their depositions de novo, the court ruled there was no substantial evidence to support the Department's conclusion that rehabilitation was available to Spitzack. The testimony from medical and expert witnesses was considerably divergent, ranging from opinions that Spitzack was unemployable to recommendations that he work at a sedentary job. Neither side offered a rehabilitation plan, because Spitzack's expert, Peniston, felt one was not appropriate, and Employer thought it was Spitzack's burden to show the feasibility of such a plan. As it was Employer's burden to establish that rehabilitation or retraining was a reasonable alternative to lifetime disability benefits, the circuit court should have given it the opportunity to meet that burden. We therefore remand this case to the Department for a hearing on the rehabilitation or retraining issue consistent with this opinion. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. MILLER, C.J., AMUNDSON, J., and WUEST, Retired J., concur. SABERS, J., concurs in part and dissents in part. GILBERTSON, J., not having been a member of the Court at the time this case was considered, did not participate.