Court Opinion

ID: 9577791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:38:08.197194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:16.341768
License: Public Domain

SUNDBY, J.
(dissenting). The question on this appeal is whether a worker's compensation insurer who also insures the negligent third party may assert a foreign statute of limitation when it fails to give notice of the possible conflict, as required by § 102.29(4) and (5), Stats.1 I conclude that it may not and therefore dissent.
*376Subsections (4) and (5) of § 102.29, Stats., create a bar against an insurer who has a duty to notify all parties and the department of its possible conflict and does not from asserting any statute of limitation. This is consistent with the spirit and intent of the Worker's Compensation Act. This Act, created in 1911, constitutes a compact between employers and employees and the state. Because the industrial revolution spawned so many workplace accidents and lawsuits arising out of those accidents, the legislature created a system of compensation for employees injured on the job. Worker's compensation became the employee's exclusive remedy. In exchange, the employee traded his or her right to sue the employer for work-related accidents. That compact, however, did not extend to third parties who injured an employee who was at the time performing services for his or her employer. Thus, the legislature created § 102.29, which is an exception to the exclusive remedy under § 102.03(2), Stats.
The philosophy of third-party liability is that a person who has negligently injured an employee shall not receive a windfall simply because the Act protects the employee. However, the cause of action under § 102.29, Stats., does not belong exclusively to the employee. The employer who has paid or is obligated to pay a worker's compensation claim under ch. 102 has *377the same right as the employee to make a claim or maintain an action against a negligent third party for the employee's injury or death. Section 102.29(1). If the department pays or is obligated to pay a claim, the department also has the right to maintain an action against the third party who causes an employee's injury or death. Regardless of who brings the action, if there is a recovery, the proceeds are divided as provided under § 102.29(1).
It occasionally happens that the worker's compensation insurance carrier also insures the negligent third party. Plainly, in that case, it would be to the insurer’s benefit not to initiate an action against its own insured. Perhaps it could not under its contract with its insured. In that case, the legislature requires that the insurer give notice of this conflict to all parties and the department so that they may protect their third-party liability rights, including timely beginning an action.
Because the accident which injured the employee in this case occurred in Iowa, the majority concludes that Iowa's two-year statute of limitations is made applicable to this action by § 893.07, Stats.2 What the majority fails to recognize is that § 102.29(4) and (5), Stats., operates as a statutory equitable bar to the insurer raising any statute of limitations defense if it fails to give the notice required under § 102.29(4). By not giving notice as required, the insurer failed to put *378the parties and the department on notice that they would have to protect their own interests. We need not look to § 893.07 or the Iowa statute of limitations because the insurer, which failed to give the notice required by § 102.29(4), cannot enforce any statute of limitation until six years from the date of the employee's injury. Because the majority fails to give effect to § 102.29(4) and (5), I respectfully dissent.

 Section 102.29, STATS., provides in part:
(4) If the employer and the 3rd party are insured by the same insurer, or by the insurers who are under common control, the *376employer's insurer shall promptly notify the parties in interest and the department. If the employer has assumed the liability of the 3rd party, it shall give similar notice, in default of which any settlement with an injured employe or beneficiary is void. . ..
(5) An insurer subject to sub. (4) which fails to comply with the notice provision of that subsection and which fails to commence a 3rd party action, within the 3 years allowed by s. 893.54, may not plead that s. 893.54 is a bar in any action commenced by the injured employe under this section against any such 3rd party subsequent to 3 years from the date of injury, but prior to 6 years from such date of injury....

 Section 893.07, Stats., provides:
(1) If an action is brought in this state on a foreign cause of action and the foreign period of limitation which applies has expired, no action may be maintained in this state.
(2) If an action is brought in this state on a foreign cause of action and the foreign period of limitation which applies to that action has not expired, but the applicable Wisconsin period of limitation has expired, no action may be maintained in this state.