Court Opinion

ID: 9765132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:53:00.153848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:05.672117
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, concurring. The dissenting opinion correctly sets out this court’s sound principles bearing on stare decisis, and I certainly do not take issue with them. This court has and continues to follow those rules, but it should not do so blindly. As the majority opinion says, stare decisis has never been applied mechanically to prohibit overriding prior decisions that have determined the meaning of statutes. Only recently, this court dealt with the Second Injury Fund in the case of Stucco Plus, Inc. v. Rose, 327 Ark. 314, 938 S.W.2d 556 (1997), where we held the Worker’s Compensation Commission erred in relying on the Commission’s public policy to protect the solvency of the Fund. In so holding, the Stucco Plus case stood at odds with this court’s earlier cases of Riceland Foods, Inc. v. Second Injury Fund, 289 Ark. 528, 715 S.W.2d 432 (1986), and McCarver v. Second Injury Fund, 289 Ark. 509, 715 S.W.2d 428 (1986). The Riceland Foods and McCarver cases were reviews of court of appeals’ decisions which were infected with the court of appeals’ belief that the solvency of the Second Injury Fund required the Fund law provisions to be strictly complied with. See Second Injury Fund v. McCarver, 17 Ark. App. 101, 704 S.W.2d 639 (1986); Second Injury Fund v. Riceland Foods, Inc., 17 Ark. App. 104, 704 S.W.2d 635 (1986). In short, the court of appeals inferred that the Fund might become insolvent, if the court adopted an interpretation of the Fund law that permitted employers to seek Fund relief in instances where the injured or handicapped workers sustain both the first and second injuries while with the same employer. See, Glaze, J., dissenting, Riceland Foods, Inc., 17 Ark. App. at 100. Unfortunately, this court in its review of Riceland Foods expressly and favorably recognized the court of appeals’ solvency reference to the Fund as the state of the law. 289 Ark. at 532. As already noted, our court, after deciding Stucco Plus as it did, had cases going opposite directions as to how Arkansas’s Fund law should be interpreted and what, if any, effect insolvency of the Fund should play in awarding benefits. As I see it, this court was either correct in its holding in Riceland Foods and McCarver, or it was correct in Stucco Plus, and it is this court’s province and duty to decide which case(s) should prevail. Stare decisis is simply not the issue; the issue, instead, is whether the rationale in Riceland Foods and McCarver prevails or whether the reasoning in Stucco Plus should stand. Because I believe solvency of the Fund has no relevance when construing Fund provisions, I join with the majority court in overriding Riceland Foods and McCarver.