Court Opinion

ID: 9619033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:21:09.14654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:35.665679
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent because I think the main opinion is based on “if” assumptions not germane to nor dispositive here. It says that “Had the Commission first made the" award, the Travelers would have paid” it. The Commission made no award because no claim was filed with it until after a third-party settlement amounting to about five times the amount provided as a maximum under the Utah Unemployment Act." The settlement was made without anyone bothering to file a claim, which fact obviously did not comply with the very statute under which they now claim attorneys’ fees, 35-1-62, which requires the filing of a claim with the Commission as a condition precedent to recovery of attorneys’ fees when it says that “If compensation is claimed1 and the . . . insurance carrier becomes obligated to pay compensation,2 the . . . carrier shall become trustee3 of the cause of action against the third party and may bring and maintain the action either in its own name or in the name of the injured employee . . . .”4 No compensation was claimed, the insurance carrier was not consulted nor put on the risk, but applicants chose to undercut 35-1-62 and employ their - own private counsel to pursue- the third-party claim, not under the statute but in violation of it.-
Using the same kind of reasoning employed in the main opinión, had' a claim been filed with 'the' Commission,’ th'e likeli*428hood is that, as is the case -with almost all the claims filed, an award of $20,000, under the circumstances of this case would have been made without any resort to the employment of an attorney, and hence attorneys’ fees would not have been involved at all, in which event 35-1-62 would have been inapplicable. To deviate from the statute having to do with attorney-fee apportionment and then contract with independent counsel to pay a stipulated attorney’s fee to pursue a third-party claim without first allowing the Commission an opportunity to eliminate such fee by making an award where no fees are necessary or advisable and almost predictably so, and thereafter, and after the large settlement made, to file a so-called claim for an award for the obvious purpose of recovering some attorneys’ fees already paid and agreed to without the Commission’s knowledge or consent, is quite unconscionable, an unwarranted use of Utah taxpayers’ money to employ or attempt to employ a state compensation agency as a collection agency, violates completely the letter and spirit of the workmen’s compensation law, does not adhere to 35-1-62 in at least two respects, and what is more, attempts to circumvent the obvious purpose of 35-1-87, which says that “In all cases coming before the industrial commission in which attorneys have been employed, the commission is vested with full power to regulate and fix the fees of such attorneys.” To succumb to the urgence of the applicants sanctions some sort of glorified “nunc pro tunc” vehicle not authorized either under the act or in good conscience.
The main opinion suggests that because of applicants’ efforts, the order of the Commission resulted in an undeserved windfall to the carrier. The order did no such thing, since nothing had been before it that would have allowed the Commission to exercise any discretion whatever. If there was a windfall, it was because the applicants, through competent counsel made a settlement, which settlement resulted in the windfall, if any there might be, and the applicants now seek an undeserved windfall by a devious route and what I believe to be an inaccurate reasoning with respect to the construction of the act and the purpose for its existence. (All emphasis added.)
CALLISTER, C. J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HENRIOD, J.

. Which compensation was not claimed.

. There was no determination that the carrier was obligated at all.

. The carrier was never a trustee of the cause of action, although it had the absolute right to choose such status before there could be any splitting of fees.

.The carrier bad no choice in the matter before the applicants procured a settlement.