Court Opinion

ID: 9845616
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:25:16.740793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:16.233475
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE RUSSELL, with whom JUSTICE COMPTON
joins, dissenting.
Code § 65.1-40 is a model of legislative clarity. It provides that the Workers’ Compensation Act “shall exclude all other rights and remedies of such employee ... at common law or otherwise, on account of such injury.” No serious contention can be made that this language is ambiguous. Yet, the majority opinion appears to harbor the suspicion that the General Assembly could not have intended what it so clearly said. It proceeds to carve out an exception to this unambiguous statute, evidently based upon a theory of implied repeal.
The majority’s reasoning is that the General Assembly, in amending the motor vehicle laws to require self-insured persons to provide uninsured motorist coverage, and by amending the insurance laws to make uninsured motorist coverage mandatory, has somehow repealed the “exclusivity provision” of the Workers’ Compensation Act. There are at least three flaws in that reasoning. First, the motor vehicle statutes in question make no mention of the Workers’ Compensation Act; they address entirely different subject matter. Second, the General Assembly has gone out of its way to preclude the kind of implied repealer for which the majority opinion argues. In Code § 38.2-900, the legislature expressly provided that the provisions of Title 38.2, which include the Unin*437sured Motorist Law, “shall not amend or repeal any provisions of Title 65.1 relating to workers’ compensation.'''’ (Emphasis added.) Third, implied repealer is never presumed, City of Richmond v. County Board, 199 Va. 679, 685, 101 S.E.2d 641, 646 (1958). Statutes are to be construed so as to permit them to operate in harmony, not in a way that creates conflict between them, Albemarle County v. Marshall, Clerk, 215 Va. 756, 761, 214 S.E.2d 146, 150 (1975).
The majority’s reliance upon Fidelity and Casualty Co. v. Futrell, 211 Va. 751, 180 S.E.2d 502 (1971), is misplaced. The employee in Futrell was entitled to uninsured motorist coverage because the terms of an insurance contract covered him. The insurance carrier had contractually bound itself to cover persons in Futrell’s position. Here, by contrast, in the absence of any contractual undertaking, the majority opinion seeks to achieve the same result by an exercise in statutory construction. Further, as the majority opinion concedes, the exclusivity provision of the Workers’ Compensation Act was never raised in Futrell. That case involved only an interpretation of contractual policy language.
The majority opinion, having evidently determined that Code § 65.1-40 is too broad and sweeping, construes it to mean something less than it plainly says. It may be a source of considerable astonishment, if not amusement, that this Court, on the very day this case was decided, handed down a decision reiterating a principle to which we have adhered for many years: “When there is a claim that the language employed in a statute is too broad in its scope, the fault, if any, should be corrected by the General Assembly, not by this Court.” Hagan v. Antonio, 240 Va. 347, 352, 397 S.E.2d 810, 812 (this day decided) (quoting Gonzalez v. Fairfax Hospital System, 239 Va. 307, 310-11, 389 S.E.2d 458, 460 (1988)); Durham Bros. v. Woodson, 155 Va. 93, 101, 154 S.E. 485, 487 (1930). Because I subscribe to that view, I would affirm.