Court Opinion

ID: 9754861
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:16:56.855759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:59.836571
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
In Hefferin v. Stempkowski, 247 Pa.Super. 366, 372 A.2d 869 (1977), allocatur refused, this court held that a recent amendment to the Workmen’s Compensation Act, Act of Dec. 5, 1974, P.L. 782, No. 263, § 6, 77 P.S. § 481(b), prevented an employer from being joined as additional defendant in a suit by its employee against a third party. In his concurring opinion Judge VAN der VOORT noted that this decision left a number of questions unanswered, among them:
In the event judgment goes against the third party defendant, does he have a right of set-off or recoupment for the amount of compensation paid or to be paid to the injured plaintiff?
247 Pa.Super. at 370, 372 A.2d at 872.
The present case raises exactly this question. It is not strictly accurate to say, as the majority opinion does, that in Hefferin “our Court considered and rejected the identical contention,” Majority Opinion at 272, for in Hefferin the question was simply whether the employer could be joined as an additional defendant for whatever purpose. (It is true that the result sought by the appellants in both cases — a judgment reduced by the amount of workmen’s compensation — might be the same.) Whether or not the cases are identical, however, the result in Hefferin was simply announced, not explained.1
As I have thought more about Judge VAN der VOORT’s question, I have concluded that we should try to explain our result in Hefferin, that is, say why it is a sensible result, and one that the Legislature evidently intended. At the moment *116I am unable to offer such an explanation. I shall try to explain this inability by asking the reader to consider three hypothetical cases.
Case No. 1: An employee is injured at the worksite. The employer is not at fault; the fault is totally that of a third party tortfeasor. In this case, Hefferin works no injustice. The employee may sue the third party and get a full recovery. In the meantime he may have received workmen’s compensation payments from the employer, but the employer will be subrogated to the employee’s rights up to the amount of the compensation payments, and therefore will be able to recoup the payments out of the judgment against the third party tortfeasor. Stark v. Posh Construction Co., 192 Pa.Super. 409, 416, 162 A.2d 9, 12 (1960); Workmen’s Compensation Act, supra, 77 P.S. § 671. (Hefferin specifically holds that § 481(b) did not change the employer’s right of subrogation.) This result is just, because the party who caused the injury bears the full burden; the employee is “made whole,” but does not recover more than what he requires to be made whole; and the employer, innocent of negligence, in the end pays nothing.
Case No. 2: The same worksite injury, but this time the employer is totally at fault. Again, Hefferin works no injustice. The employee receives workmen’s compensation payments from the employer. If the employee sues the third party, the third party will be found not liable. (This is the ideal outcome; I shall discuss the less ideal outcome in footnote 3, infra.) Thus, the third party, innocent of negligence, pays nothing; the employee is made whole to the extent that the Workmen’s Compensation Act allows; and to the same extent the party who caused the injury, the employer, will pay. (The amount the employer pays may not be enough to make the employee whole, but the “bargain” of the Workmen’s Compensation Act is that the employee, in return for getting an assured recovery of some sort, regardless of fault, is limited to a maximum recovery, while the employer, in return for being assured of only having to pay a certain limited amount, must pay that *117amount regardless of fault. See Socha v. Metz, 385 Pa. 632, 637, 123 A.2d 837, 839 (1956).)
Case No. 3: The same worksite injury, but the employer and third party are equally negligent.2 Here, it seems to me, Hefferin does work injustice.
Under prior practice, if the employee received workmen’s compensation payments and then sued the third party in negligence, the third party could join the employer as an additional defendant to protect his right of contribution. By shifting some of the burden to the employer, the third party reduced his own judgment accordingly. If found liable, however, the employer would be liable only to the amount of workmen’s compensation, and if the compensation were already paid, the judgment would as to the employer be considered satisfied. Elston v. Industrial Lift Truck Co., 420 Pa. 97, 216 A.2d 318 (1966); Brown Equipment Rental Corp. v. Dickey, 397 Pa. 454, 155 A.2d 836 (1959); Maio v. Fahs, 339 Pa. 180, 14 A.2d 105 (1940). Since the employer had been found liable, he could not recover his workmen’s compensation payments out of the judgment against the third party tortfeasor. See Stark v. Posh Construction Co., supra.
Since Hefferin, however, the employer may not be joined as an additional defendant. The result is that one of two equally negligent tortfeasors — the third party — bears the entire burden of the judgment. Since the employer is not — cannot be — a party to the suit, the third party cannot get contribution from the employer commensurate with the employer’s fault. The employee, on the other hand, may have the opportunity to recover twice: once by the full judgment against the third party, and once through workmen’s compensation; for if the employer comes against the employee for subrogation, the employee may defend on the ground that the employer was at fault and is thus disabled from getting reimbursed through subrogation. If the employee fails, or is not permitted to prove the employer’s *118fault, the employer will recoup the workmen’s compensation payments and thus in the end pay nothing — despite having been at fault. Either outcome — a double recovery for the employee, or a negligent employer who pays nothing — represents an injustice; additionally, the third party is forced to bear the full burden of the judgment when he was only partially at fault.3 As one commentator, Donald J. Farage, Esquire, has remarked:
Surely, this must be the only area of the law wherein a culpable defendant not only is immune from suit [as in the sovereign immunity situation] but also has the affirmative right via the vehicle of subrogation to be made whole for loss suffered as a result of his own fault.
Pennsylvania Bar Institute, 1978 Semi-annual Survey of Significant Developments in the Law 702 (Spring, 1978).
I find it almost impossible to believe that the Legislature could have intended such a result.4 Yet the language of *119§ 481(b) is difficult to interpret otherwise, as Judge VAN der VOORT observed in his concurring opinion in Hefferin. Judge PRICE’S dissents in Hefferin and in the present case offer an appealing alternative, but one that cannot be reached except in the teeth of § 481(b) — or so at least it seems to me.
In these circumstances I believe that the very least we should do is to urge the Legislature to reconsider § 481(b). I also believe, however, that we should do more than that, which is why I have entitled this opinion a concurring and dissenting opinion. Rather than decide the case now, we should set it down for reargument with instructions to counsel to address the problem of the injustice that § 481(b) works, if Hefferin stands. It may be that an issue of constitutional dimensions is involved, and I should expect counsel to consider that.5
Two United States District Courts have indeed considered the constitutionality of § 481(b), and have upheld it. In *120Adamik v. Pullman Standard, 439 F.Supp. 784 (W.D.Pa. 1977), the court upheld § 481(b) against a challenge based on federal equal protection; the court did not specifically decide the constitutionality under art. I, sect. 11, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, noting instead that such a decision was more appropriately left to the appellate courts of this state. However, the court indicated that Singer v. Sheppard, 464 Pa. 387, 346 A.2d 897 (1975), under which the no-fault automobile insurance law was held constitutional, supported constitutionality. (Incidentally, the court did not reach an argument, like appellant’s, for a credit against the judgment.) In Albrecht v. Pneuco Machinery Co., 448 F.Supp. 851 (E.D.Pa.1978), the court found that § 481(b) did not violate the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses.
Whether we should reach the same result is, of course, an open question. In addition, these cases centered mainly on the propriety of the Legislature’s desire to protect the employer from liability to third parties, but they did not discuss the propriety of assessing the full cost of this public policy decision against the third party, who is forced to pay for the negligence of another. (It is undisputed that, whatever the procedure, the employer’s maximum liability should be the workmen’s compensation maximum.)
Finally, if reargument is ordered, I should hope that amici curiae would file briefs.

. Since we cannot know the Supreme Court’s reasons for denying allocatur in Hefferin no significance may be read into its action.

. I have characterized the negligence as “equal” for the sake of simplicity. Obviously, the fault might be more that of one or the other party, in any proportion.

. In Case No. 2, where the third party is innocent of negligence but is sued nonetheless, it is possible that the third party will refute the allegation of negligence without having the employer, the real tortfeasor, in court as an additional defendant. However, in this case Hefferin still prevents the third party from offering the jury the real negligent party in person, thereby creating the risk that the jury will find against the third party more as a matter of sympathy for the employee than as a matter of evidence.

. As an alternative, appellant here asks that he be allowed to join the employer only for the purpose of establishing that the employer was at fault and therefore has no right of subrogation; this established, appellant would then argue that he should get a credit against his judgment for the amount that the employee got from workmen’s compensation, which the employer cannot now recover from the employee.
Another (more sensible?) result, which would both comport with the purposes of the Workmen’s Compensation Act and allocate the liability fairly, would be this: where the employer and a third party are equally negligent, the third party pays only his half of the judgment and the employer pays up to the compensation maximum in fulfillment of his half of the judgment. Thus, no one bears more than his fair share of the liability judgment; to the extent that the employer bears less than his share, and the employee thereby gets less than his due, this is what the Act contemplated in the “bargain” between the employee and employer, the one getting an assured recovery, the other getting a fixed limit on liability. It is unjust to make the third party fill the gap between what the employee gets and *119what he needs to be made whole, for the third party was not part of the bargain; he gained nothing from it.

. In referring to the possible existence of an issue of constitutional dimensions, I am aware of the Supreme Court’s admonition in Wiegand v. Wiegand, 461 Pa. 482, 337 A.2d 256 (1975), that we are not to consider constitutional issues sua sponte. The danger of such consideration, however, is that a decision will be made without the benefit of arguments for and against constitutionality having been submitted by the parties, who are the one most concerned with the outcome. This danger would be avoided by the procedure I propose. I submit that it is demeaning to a court to decide a case of great public importance, like this one, in which the court believes a constitutional issue may be involved, as though no constitutional issue were involved, simply because at the first argument the constitutional issue was not raised.
Indeed, in Adamik v. Pullman Standard, 439 F.Supp. 784 (W.D.Pa. 1977), the appellant argued that because the constitutionality of § 481(b) under the Pennsylvania constitution was not discussed in Hefferin, it was still an open question. It was in á tone of incredulity that the District Court said:
What [appellant] is asking us to say in this case is that notwithstanding the clear language of Hefferin v. Stempkowski, supra, by the Superior Court whose decision was left untouched by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, nevertheless these courts overlooked the unconstitutionality of this legislation.
439 F.Supp. at 786.