Opinion ID: 1179323
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Under the California workers compensation scheme, employer and employee third-party actions are interchangeable.

Text: (2a) The California workers compensation scheme not only fixes the right of an employee who suffers a job-related injury to recover compensation from his or her employer or fellow employees (see Lab. Code, §§ 3600, 3601) but also significantly defines the rights of action of both an employee and an employer in the event that a third party is responsible for the employee's injury. These statutory provisions are primarily procedural. ( Roe v. Workmen's Comp. Appeals Bd. (1974) 12 Cal.3d 884, 889 [117 Cal. Rptr. 683, 528 P.2d 771].) They seek to insure, first, that, regardless of whether it is the employee or the employer who sues the third party, both the employee and the employer recover their due, and, second, that, as far as possible, the third party need defend only one lawsuit. To these ends, the workers compensation statutes set up procedures which guarantee an employee and an employer notice of each other's action, authorize the employee and the employer to intervene in each other's lawsuit, provide for mandatory consolidation of separate employee and employer actions, and grant the employee and the employer the right to share in each other's judgment or settlement. The procedures governing notice, intervention, and mandatory consolidation are relatively straightforward. Labor Code section 3853 provides: If either the employee or the employer brings an action against such third person, he shall forthwith give to the other written notice of the action, and of the name of the court in which the action is brought by personal service or registered mail. Proof of such service shall be filed in such action. If the action is brought by either the employer or employee, the other may, at any time before trial on the facts, join as party plaintiff or shall consolidate his action, if brought independently. (3) The procedures which the workers compensation statutes set up to enable employers and employees to share in each other's recoveries are inevitably more complex. To the extent that the damages which the employee recovers from a third party simply duplicate the benefits which the employee has already received from the employer, the employee's own recovery provides a fund from which the employer may draw. [6] (4) It is, however, necessary to authorize the employer, in the event that the employee does not sue, to recover the damages which the third party owes to both the employer and the employee: read together, Labor Code sections 3852, 3853, 3854, and 3859 provide such authorization. ( State Comp. Ins. Fund v. Matulich (1942) 55 Cal. App.2d 528, 530-531 [131 P.2d 21]; accord, Aetna Cas. etc. Co. v. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., supra, 41 Cal.2d at p. 787; Smith v. County of Los Angeles (1969) 276 Cal. App.2d 156, 163 [81 Cal. Rptr. 120]; see also 2 Hanna, Cal. Law of Employee Injuries and Workmen's Compensation (2d ed. 1976) § 24.07[3].) It also is necessary to set up procedures whereby an employee may share in an employer's recovery, and vice versa. Labor Code section 3856 provides for such procedures in the event that an employee or an employer recovers a judgment. Labor Code section 3860 sets out analagous procedures to govern settlements. (See also Lab. Code, § 3859.) (2b) Labor Code sections 3856 and 3860 make it possible for the third party to be held liable for all the wrong his tortfeasance brought about ( Smith v. County of Los Angeles, supra, 276 Cal. App.2d at p. 162), regardless of whether it is the employee or the employer who brings suit. Taken together with the notice, intervention, and consolidation procedures set out in Labor Code section 3853, these statutes attempt to insure that [i]n either case, single or joint plaintiffs, there results but the one total action, and the defendant is put to his defense but once with the totality of recovery for his tortfeasance at issue. ( Id., at p. 164 [italics in original].) The workers compensation statutes governing employer and employee actions against third parties do not define the substantive law which determines whether an employee or an employer will in fact recover. (See Baugh v. Rogers, supra . ) Instead, the substantive law which governs employer and employee actions is usually the general tort law. As applied in cases involving employee and employer third party claims, however, the general tort law works in parallel with the procedures which the Legislature has set up. Substantively, as well as procedurally, employer and employee actions are interchangeable: regardless of who brings an action, it is essentially the same lawsuit. This congruence is largely the result of our decision in Witt v. Jackson (1961) 57 Cal.2d 57 [17 Cal. Rptr. 369, 366 P.2d 641]. Witt established that an employer cannot recover from a third party payments made under the workers compensation laws if either the employer or the injured employee was contributorily negligent; moreover, if the employer was contributorily negligent and the employee was not, the employee could recover from the third party only damages in excess of the workers compensation benefits which the employee received from the employer. ( Id., at pp. 68-73.) (5) To the extent that contributory negligence is a defense available to a third party, Witt causes the conduct of both the employee and the employer to be relevant regardless of whether it is the employee or the employer who brings suit. In effect, therefore, Witt turns the employee and employer actions into substantively the same lawsuit.