Court Opinion

ID: 9703791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:07:52.718223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:51.727764
License: Public Domain

HORNBY, Justice,
dissenting.
This employee has a knee that is permanently injured as a result of two work-related accidents, the first occurring in 1980 and the second, aggravating the knee’s condition, in 1982. Until 1985 he received medical treatments, payments for medical treatment and (commencing in 1982) weekly compensation benefits, all arranged for or provided by his employer. There is simply no factual basis for the Court’s “natural inference” that all treatment after 1982 was related solely to the 1982 incident. Instead, as Justice Wathen observes, the Commission found specifically that both injuries contributed to his condition.
The Court seems to be concerned that the first insurance carrier had no notice that the second insurance carrier’s payments might toll the statute of limitations, and indeed this case is a contest, not between employee and employer, but between two insurance carriers over sharing the risk. The statute of limitations, however, is written in terms of the employee’s claim for compensation and Liberty Mutual, the second carrier, stands in his shoes through subrogation. Any change in carriers was of no concern to the employee.1 So far as he was concerned, his employer arranged for various benefits until 1985 for a condition that (the Commission found) resulted from both the 1980 and 1982 events. The statute of limitations had not run against the employee with respect to the 1980 incident because the employer, through its carriers, had provided continuing voluntary payments. 39 M.R.S.A. § 95 (Pamph.1988). (If any notice was required, the burden should lie on the employer or its carrier to notify the employee that it was limiting the significance of its voluntary payments to the 1982 aggravation.) Since the statute of limitations had not run as to the employee, it had not run as to Liberty Mutual in its petition for apportionment.
*116I would therefore affirm the Commission’s decision on the basis of the ongoing payments (the change of carriers being of no moment to the employee) and would not reach the issue whether employer-provided treatment at an industrial health department is equivalent to payment of benefits under 39 M.R.S.A. § 95 (Pamph.1988).

. The insurance carriers and the employer are perfectly capable of providing for such notice problems through contractual language.