Court Opinion

ID: 9691413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:30:24.093225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:18.612577
License: Public Domain

Stephan, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. In my opinion, the majority has made an unwarranted departure from settled law, which it attempts to justify by recognizing a right to “suspend” workers’ compensation benefit payments from one injury during the period when benefits from another injury are payable, a right which is not expressly or implicitly conferred by the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act. It has long been our law that while an individual may receive concurrent workers’ compensation benefits from two or more injuries, the combined amounts received may not exceed the maximum weekly benefit established by the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act. Peterson v. Borden’s *1013Produce Co., 125 Neb. 404, 250 N.W. 240 (1933). We applied this rule most recently in Foreman v. State, 240 Neb. 716, 483 N.W.2d 752 (1992), where the worker was receiving permanent partial disability benefits of $30.58 per week from a 1986 accident at the time he was awarded temporary total disability benefits of $245 per week as the result of an accident in 1988. At the time of the second award, the maximum weekly benefit allowable under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 48-121.01 (Reissue 1988) was $245. The employer paid the benefits pursuant to both awards for a period of time and then discontinued the benefits attributable to the first injury. We held that this “was proper because the plaintiff was not entitled to compensation in excess of the prescribed statutory maximum amount of weekly compensation.” 240 Neb. at 722, 483 N.W.2d at 757. We also noted that the compensation court recognized and followed this principle by allowing the employer a credit for permanent partial disability benefits inadvertently paid during the period when the worker was receiving temporary total disability benefits in an amount equal to the statutory maximum weekly benefit. Id.
I disagree with the majority’s statement that “Anderson has distinguished her facts” from Foreman. As in Foreman, Anderson was awarded benefits for separate injuries, and during the period when the two benefits overlapped, the combined benefits exceeded the maximum weekly benefit prescribed by § 48-121.01 (Reissue 1993). The majority reaches a result different from that in Foreman by recognizing a new legal principle which authorizes a worker receiving concurrent benefits from two injuries to elect to suspend one benefit until the other is exhausted and thereby remain within the statutory maximum weekly benefit. Put another way, the majority recognizes the right of a recipient of workers’ compensation benefits to unilaterally modify the benefit period established in an award by electing to have a portion of it run consecutively to a benefit period resulting from a separate, subsequent award.
I find nothing in the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act to support this principle. It is not within the province of a court to read a meaning into a statute that is not warranted by the legislative language. State ex rel. City of Elkhorn v. Haney, 252 Neb. 788, 566 N.W.2d 771 (1997); Village of Winside v. *1014Jackson, 250 Neb. 851, 553 N.W.2d 476 (1996); Nebraska Life & Health Ins. Guar. Assn. v. Dobias, 247 Neb. 900, 531 N.W.2d 217 (1995). If the Legislature had intended that periods of benefits payable as a result of separate injuries should run consecutively, it could have so provided, as it did with respect to injuries to multiple scheduled members sustained in a single accident. See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 48-121(3) (Reissue 1993) (“compensation benefits shall be paid for the loss or loss of use of each such member or part thereof, with the periods of benefits to run consecutively”). The Legislature placed no similar provision in the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Act with respect to compensable injuries arising from separate accidents, and we have no power to do so. I would affirm the order of the review panel.
Caporale and Connolly, JJ., join in this dissent.