Court Opinion

ID: 9459618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:26:07.259688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:14.799941
License: Public Domain

ROSENN, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting
I respectfully dissent because I believe the result reached by the majority leads to the following anomalous results:
(1) A workman who sustains a personal injury and who never claims workmen’s compensation has two years in which to commence suit against the allegedly responsible third party. If he does file a workmen’s compensation claim, however, and the Commissioner renders a decision promptly, the two year period in which he may bring suit is substantially lessened.
When an injured workman files a workmen’s compensation claim, under 24 V.I.C. § 263 he may not file his third party claim until at least ninety days after the final decision of the Commissioner. He, thus, has only nine months to consider his action, and prepare and file his complaint. If the Commissioner renders his final decision less than one .year after the injury, for example within seven months, .suit against the third party must be commenced within nineteen months of the date of the injury instead of within the usual two years. Instead of protecting a personal injury claimant’s right to at least a two year statute of limitations, this interpretation of the statute has the effect of a prejudicial reduction in time in which to file suit. Ironically, the more efficient is the Commissioner, the more seriously the workman is prejudiced.
(2) Under 24 V.I.C. § 261(d) (1), an uninsured workman who receives compensation for his injury may proceed .against the negligent third party for the entire two year period of the statute of limitations. No one year limitation *628is included in this statute. When the employee is insured and receives compensation, however, in some circumstances he has less than two years to bring suit. The workman whose employer violates the law by not insuring his employees is thus placed in a more advantageous position than the workman whose employer abides by the workmen’s compensation laws.
As I read and reconcile pertinent Virgin Islands statutes, a personal injury claimant would at all times have two years from the date of injury to file his personal injury claim, whether or not he also files a workmen’s compensation claim. If he files a workmen’s compensation claim, and the Commissioner renders his final decision more than one year after the date of the injury, then the claimant has at least one year from the date of the final decision to bring his personal injury action. Such an interpretation, in my opinion, has a sound public basis since (1) it expands the statute of limitations when warranted, but never contracts it; (2) it encourages third party claims, and thus supports the Government Insurance Fund’s subrogation rights.
I therefore conclude that 24 V.I.C. § 263 and its one year limitation do not bar a cause of action under the circumstances of this case. The Puerto Rican precedents, on which the majority relies, may be persuasive but they are neither compelling nor mandatory.
The court aptly explicated the purpose of 24 V.I.C. § 263 in Ayala v. Marshall, 6 V.I. 615, 618 (1968) stating:
Thus it will be seen that the principal purpose of this section is to provide for the subrogation by the Commissioner in cases where the injured employee seeks both compensation under the statute and damages from a third party tortfeasor.
The issue in Ayala was whether employees eligible to claim under the Virgin Islands workmen’s compensation laws could file a common law suit against the third party although they had never sought the compensation remedy. *629Recognizing both that a common law remedy for negligence existed against third parties and that “a statute will not be construed to be in derogation of the common law unless both the language and intent of the statute clearly require such a construction,” the court held:
It does not necessarily follow . . . that by granting to the employee the right to seek both compensation and damages from a third party the statute deprives him of the right to seek such damages alone at common law.
6 V. I. at 618-19.
In interpreting § 263 for purposes of the issue at hand here, I would similarly follow the logical principle of reconciling both statutes and avoiding any derogation of the common law right in the absence of statutory language which “clearly require [s]” such interpretation. The general statute of limitations in the Virgin Islands, 5 V.I.C. § 31, provides a two year period for filing of causes of action for injuries to the person “except when, in special cases, a different limitation is prescribed by statute.” The one year period in which to bring claims under § 263 provides in some circumstances such a “special case,” but the principles favoring reconciliation of statutes and disfavoring derogation of common law rights suggest no such “special case” exists in the present suit. When the Commissioner takes more than one year to reach a decision, a special case exists and the two year statute of limitations is extended. When the Commissioner acts in less than one year, however, no special case exists which would shorten the two year statute of limitations.
Section 263, unlike § 31, speaks in permissive rather than mandatory terms:
[T]he injured workman or employee . . . may claim and recover damages from the third person responsible for said injury, . . . within one year following the date of the final decision of the case by the Commissioner. [Emphasis added.]
*630For § 263 to have “clearly require [d]” a dimunition of the time within which to file common law personal injury claims, I believe it would have had to have been drafted in express mandatory terms. The statutory schema of the several pertinent statutes reflects an intention of the drafters not to have shortened the general statute of limitations-when the Commissioner reached a final decision in less than one year, as in the case sub judice, but, rather, to provide at least a full year’s span for consideration, preparation,, and filing of a complaint in cases when the Commissioner’s, decision was not reached until more than one year after the injury occurred. I would thus interpret § 263 to allow filing of claims against third parties either (a) within two years of the injury, or (b) within one year of the Commissioner’s final decision, whichever should occur later. Such a construction protects a workmen’s compensation claimant by providing at least a two year period in which to sue.
The majority opinion argues that its construction of § 263 is compelled by precedent in Puerto Rico construing the Commonwealth’s nearly identical workmen’s compensation act from which the Virgin Islands statute was borrowed. It is true that Puerto Rican precedents both before1 and after2 the Virgin Islands adopted the Puerto Rican statute interpret the equivalent Commonwealth statute, 11 L.P.R.A. § 32, as a one year statute of limitations. In Puerto Rico, however, the statute of limitations on common law tort claims is also one year, 31 L.P.R.A. § 5298(2). The equivalent statute of limitations in the Virgin Islands is two years. In none of the Puerto Rican precedents, therefore, was the precise issue here before the Puerto Rican courts— *631whether the one year limitation in the compensation statute can compress the period for filing ordinary personal injury suits.
In the precedent specifically relied on by the majority, Moreno v. Penzol, 73 P.R.R. 12(1952), a tort claim had been filed more than one year after both the injury and the final decision of the Manager of the State Insurance Fund. The issue before the court was whether the Manager’s decision could be considered final when it had subsequently been appealed to the Industrial Commission. The appellant argued that filing of suit within one year of the appellate body’s decision was sufficient. The court disagreed. The issue in Moreno was therefore quite different from the issue in the case sub judice. In such circumstances, the Moreno precedent, although arguably persuasive in its dicta, is by no means compelling.
Although dealing with a quite different factual context, the Eighth Circuit, in United States ex rel. Demarois v. Farrell, 87 F.2d 957, 962-63 (8th Cir. 1937), spoke in general terms of the use of precedents in jurisdictions from which statutes had been borrowed:
When a statute is adopted from one jurisdiction into the jurisprudence of another, it will be construed so as to harmonize it with its new environment in preference to a rigid adherence to the interpretation given it in its original home; especially is this true when the construction given it in its original home would render it inconsistent with the system into which it has been adopted.
The issue in the present case involves just such a problem of harmonizing § 263 with the two year limitation of § 31, a problem never faced in Puerto Rico because of its general one year limitation on tort actions. As it is possible to harmonize the language of § 263 with that of § 31 in a consistent, rational configuration, and in the absence of a clear in*632tention to the contrary, I would do so.3 Since Joseph Berkeley did file his cause of action within the general two year statute of limitations, I do not believe it should have been dismissed.

 Moreno v. Penzol, 73 P.R.R, 12 (1952).

 Marrero Morales v. Bull Steamship Company, 279 F.2d 299 (1st Cir. 1962); Guerrido v. Alcoa Steamship Co., 234 F.2d 349 (1st Cir. 1956); Flores v. A.H. Bull Steamship Co., 167 F.Supp. 841 (D.P.R. 1958).

 I find no inconsistency between the statutory principles I have used in interpreting § 263 and the general Virgin Island principle that when it adopts a statute from a different jurisdiction, it is presumed to have also adopted the judicial interpretations which the other jurisdiction had placed on the statute prior to the Virgin Islands’ adoption. Paiewonsky v. Paiewonsky, 446 F.2d 178, 181, 8 V.I. 421 (3d Cir. 1971), et al., as cited by the majority. That presumption is inapplicable in cases such as the present one when the issue is not one merely of interpreting the borrowed statute, but the reconciliation of that statute with other local statutes which create distinctly different problems in the two jurisdictions.