Opinion ID: 1988688
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Burden of Production

Text: [¶ 13] In determining where the burden should be placed, we first address the hearing officer's reliance on Abbott, 2000 ME 201, ¶ 16, 762 A.2d at 550, in placing the burden of proof regarding the level of permanent impairment on the employee. In Abbott, we addressed, in part, an argument raised by the employee that, in applying the maximum-week cutoff in section 213, the hearing officer failed to determine the employee's percentage of whole body permanent impairment. Id. We rejected the argument, noting that Abbott had herself failed to provide any evidence on the issue of permanent impairment. Id. [¶ 14] Although the statute controlling the process for the Abbott analysis was different from the present case, in that Abbott's employer had been voluntarily paying benefits without an order or a compensation payment scheme and was therefore entitled to unilaterally terminate benefits after filing a certificate and providing twenty-one days notice, id. ¶¶ 2, 3 762 A.2d at 546-47; 39-A M.R.S.A. § 205(9)(B)(1), the question presented by Abbott is apposite here: does the employee have the burden of raising the issue of the level of impairment in a hearing regarding the application of the cap? Without reaching the question of the ultimate burden of proof, we concluded that the employee must, at a minimum, affirmatively assert the existence of a level of permanent impairment that would entitle him to indefinite receipt of benefits. [¶ 15] Placing the burden of production on the employee is consistent with the statutory scheme regarding the payment cap. The Legislature expected that fewer than twenty-five percent of these cases would exceed the cap. 39-A M.R.S.A § 213(2) (2001 & Supp.2003). Thus, although the issue may be important in many cases, there will be a substantial number of cases where there is little dispute that the threshold has not been reached. When there is no dispute that the employee's whole body permanent impairment does not meet the 11.8% threshold, it would be unnecessarily costly and time-consuming to require the employer to obtain expert medical opinion evidence on the extent of an employee's permanent impairment as an automatic initial step in litigating a petition for review. [¶ 16] Therefore, we conclude that when the employee seeks to make the percentage of impairment an issue at the hearing, the employee must bear a burden of raising the issue of the percentage of whole body impairment, and of producing some evidence to persuade a reasonable fact-finder of the existence of a genuine issue concerning the percentage of impairment. [6] The burden of production does not require that the employee convince the hearing officer on the ultimate issue of whole body permanent impairment, but merely that the employee must produce competent evidence to suggest that the employee's whole body permanent impairment may be above the threshold for purposes of obviating the durational cap pursuant to section 213(1). [7]