Court Opinion

ID: 9603262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:04:27.614665+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:10.030646
License: Public Domain

OPINION WOOD, Chief Judge. The issue in this workmen’s compensation case is whether plaintiff should have been awarded compensation benefits under the New Mexico law. Defendants’ contention is that Oklahoma law should have been applied. Plaintiff is a resident of Oklahoma employed as a truck driver. He was hired in Oklahoma. His employer, Transcon Lines has an Oklahoma City address. Plaintiff’s truck run was from Oklahoma City to the West Coast and return to Oklahoma City. Plaintiff was injured in March, 1977 when the truck in which he was riding was involved in an accident in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Compensation was awarded on the basis of disability resulting from this New Mexico accident. On appeal, defendants do not contest the trial court’s determination that plaintiff suffered a compensable injury, and do not contest an award based on two weeks temporary total disability and 15 percent partial disability. Defendants claim that Oklahoma law should have been applied in reckoning the benefits. In making this claim, defendants do not contend that New Mexico lacked jurisdiction to award benefits under the New Mexico compensation statute. Nor do defendants claim that “full faith and credit” or any other constitutional principle required that the benefits awarded be based on the law of Oklahoma rather than the law of New Mexico. See Chapman v. John St. John Drilling Company, 73 N.M. 261, 387 P.2d 462 (1963). Defendants assert that Oklahoma has the greatest interest in the employment relationship, “that the better approach would be to apply Oklahoma law to the award and the New Mexico Court could have and should have done so.” Defendants do not inform us as to the Oklahoma law they would have the New Mexico courts apply. An Oklahoma statute, in effect at the time of plaintiff’s accidental injury, was 85 Okla.Stat.Ann. § 4. This statute provided that: [a] Oklahoma law applied “to employers and to employees, irrespective of where accident resulting in injury may occur, whether within or without the territorial limits of the State of Oklahoma, when the contract of employment was entered into within the State of Oklahoma, and the said employee was acting in the course of such employment and performing work outside the territorial limits of this State under direction of such employer.” [b] If the provisions of paragraph [a] are met the employee “may elect to commence and maintain his action for benefits and compensation” before the Oklahoma State Industrial Commission. [c]“Such right of election shall, however, not preclude the injured employee from recovering any benefits or compensation provided under any law of the State where injury occurred, and if such action be so commenced in such other state, or under the law of another state, and is prosecuted to final determination, such employee shall thereupon be precluded from his right of action under the laws of this State.” (Our emphasis.) If, as defendants contend, Oklahoma law should have been applied by the New Mexico court, the Oklahoma statute gave the injured employee the option to recover “any benefits or compensation” provided under New Mexico law. See Morrison v. Hurst Drilling Company, 508 P.2d 643 (Okl.1973). This Oklahoma statute does not, however, tell us what benefits or compensation are provided under New Mexico law for a workman injured while travelling through New Mexico. The New Mexico compensation law does not specifically state that New Mexico compensation benefits are to be paid to a transitory worker suffering a compensable injury in New Mexico. However, legislative history and current provisions of New Mexico compensation statutes show that the benefits to which plaintiff was entitled were the benefits of the New Mexico workmen’s compensation law. Laws 1949, ch. 14, § 2 (compiled as § 59-10-34, N.M.S.A.1953, 1st Repl. Vol. 9, pt. 1) provided, under certain conditions, for an exemption from the New Mexico compensation law of an employer and his employee who was hired outside of New Mexico but was temporarily within New Mexico doing work for his employer. Under this statute the “benefits under the workmen’s compensation act or similar laws of such other state shall be the exclusive remedy against such employer for an injury * * received by such employee while working for such employer in this state.” The above 1949 law was repealed by Laws 1973, ch. 227, § 2. Since this repeal, no New Mexico statute has excepted the out-of-state employee, injured in New Mexico, from benefits under the New Mexico compensation law. Laws 1973, ch. 227, § 1 enacted new extraterritorial provisions. The changes effected by Laws 1973, ch. 227 show a legislative intent to change the law that previously existed. State ex rel. Bird v. Apodaca, 91 N.M. 279, 573 P.2d 213 (1977). Laws 1973, ch. 227, § 1 was repealed by Laws 1975, ch. 241, § 1. This 1975 law re-enacted the 1973 law as three sections. The pertinent sections are §§ 52-1-65 and 52-1-66, N.M.S.A. 1978. Section 52 — 1—66 provides a method for the out-of-state employer to “be deemed to have secured the payment of compensation under this act” in a situation “[i]f an employee is entitled to the benefits of this act by reason of an injury sustained in this state in employment by an employer who is domiciled in another state and who has not secured the payment of compensation as required by this act * * * .” Section 52-1-65, supra, provides that a payment “of benefits under the workmen’s compensation law of another state * * * to an employee * * * otherwise entitled on account of such injury * * * to the benefits of this act * * * shall not be a bar to a claim for benefits under this act * * *  Neither § 52-1-65 nor § 52-1-66, supra, expressly provide that New Mexico benefits are to be paid the transitory employee injured in New Mexico. Both statutes, however, contemplate that New Mexico benefits are to be paid; that benefits from another state do not control the permissible recovery in New Mexico. These provisions, combined with the repeal of the 1949 law which excluded the transitory employee from New Mexico benefits, and the legislative intent to change the 1949 law, provide the basis for our conclusion. That conclusion is that a transitory employee suffering a compensable injury in New Mexico is entitled to the benefits provided by the New Mexico workmen’s compensation law.  New Mexico law required that plaintiff’s award be on the basis of New Mexico benefits; the trial court did not err in awarding those benefits. Defendant’s argument as to a “better approach” is not only foreclosed by our statutory provisions but would not lead to a different result under Oklahoma law. The judgment is affirmed. Plaintiff is awarded $1,750 for services of his attorney in the appeal. IT IS SO ORDERED. HERNANDEZ, J., concurs.