Court Opinion

ID: 9618555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:13:51.86608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:30:32.477499
License: Public Domain

*675Judge Greene
dissenting.
I disagree with the majority’s opinion that the provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act bar plaintiffs wrongful death claim under the Tort Claims Act.
The majority correctly points out that when Ivey was decided, Section 97-13(c) only allowed “burial expenses . . . for any prisoner whose accident results in death.” Although our Supreme Court did determine that burial expenses are not compensation, this determination was not the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision in Ivey to allow a prisoner who accidentally died while on assigned work to bring a claim under the Tort Claims Act. The Court was explicit in holding:
the plaintiff’s right to have the tort claim heard and passed on has not been withdrawn [by the amendment to 97-13 which provided the exclusivity provisions of 97-10 apply to prisoners “entitled to compensation”]. If the Legislature intended to exclude prisoners, all it had to do was pass a simple amendment to the Tort Claims Act saying, “prisoners assigned by the courts to work under the State Prison Department are excluded.” Intention to withdraw a prisoner’s right to assert a tort claim cannot be presumed as a result of the amendment to the Work[er]’s Compensation Act in its present form and setting.
Ivey, 252 N.C. at 620, 114 S.E.2d at 815.
Although the Workers’ Compensation Act has been amended to delete the burial expenses limitation when a prisoner is accidentally killed, this amendment does not address the concerns expressed by the Court in Ivey or the reasons for its decision. Despite the decision in Ivey which makes a clear call to the Legislature to amend the Tort Claims Act if it wants to exclude prisoners from coverage, and despite having amended both the Workers’ Compensation Act and the Tort Claims Act since Ivey, the Legislature, for more than thirty years since the Ivey decision, has not acted to exclude prisoners from the provisions of the Tort Claims Act. See Hewitt v. Garrett, 274 N.C. 356, 361, 163 S.E.2d 372, 375 (1968) (failure of Legislature to change statute in more than thirty years following Supreme Court’s interpretation of statute suggest that the “law-making body is satisfied with the [Court’s] interpretation). Furthermore, the Legislature has not altered the basic framework of 9743(c) which creates an exception to the Workers’ Compensation Act to allow coverage for prisoners *676accidentally injured or killed while on assigned work and which then places limitations on that coverage. N.C.G.S. § 97-13(c). Section 9743(c) is today, as it was at the time of Ivey, a “jumbled and confusing subsection which is an exception followed by two provisos to the section of the Work[er]’s Compensation Act.” Ivey, 252 N.C. at 619, 114 S.E.2d at 815. Therefore, if the Legislature desires the Workers’ Compensation Act to be the exclusive remedy for prisoners accidentally injured or killed while on assigned work, it either needs to amend the Tort Claims Act as suggested by the Court in Ivey or change Section 9743(c) to treat working prisoners as regular employees rather than as an exception to the Workers’ Compensation Act. Because the Legislature has not amended the Tort Claims Act to exclude working prisoners, and the treatment of working prisoners under the Worker’s Compensation Act as an exception is still in place, the concerns expressed by the Court in Ivey continue to exist. For these reasons, I would affirm the Industrial Commission’s decision that the claimant is entitled to compensation under the Tort Claims Act.