Court Opinion

ID: 9857788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:01:12.42672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:46:07.187491
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Justice,
concurring specialty-
I reluctantly concur in the result in this case.
The controlling statute is section 85.-35(2)u, which provides in relevant part:
If it is determined that an injury has produced a disability less than that specifically described in said schedule, compensation shall be paid during the lesser number of weeks of disability determined, as will not exceed a total amount equal to the same percentage proportion of said scheduled maximum compensation.
Workers’ compensation is supposed to pay workers for industrial disability caused by *120covered injuries. The cases define industrial disability as reduction in earning capacity. See McSpadden v. Big Ben Coal Co., 288 N.W.2d 181, 192 (Iowa 1980). In the present case, the worker’s earning capacity has been drastically and permanently reduced. His problem, however, is that he has a “scheduled” injury. The schedule conclusively presumes that the effects of functional loss of a scheduled member and industrial disability are the same. See 2 A. Larson, The Law of Workers’ Compensation § 58.11 at 10-174 (1981).
As in the present case when the functional loss from injury to a scheduled member “is not a total functional loss, the weekly payments are made for the number of weeks that the percentage of functional loss bears to the total functional loss of such a member.” Hedberg & Vonderhaar, An Overview of the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Act, 30 Drake L.Rev. 809, 827 (1980-81). As this case illustrates, no necessary correlation exists in fact between functional loss and industrial disability. Loss of a foot will mean one thing to a person with a desk job and quite another to a person who is trained only in work requiring standing, walking and lifting. But for the fortuity that his injury was to a scheduled member, Graves would have recovered for his actual industrial disability rather than the wholly arbitrary presumed industrial disability under the schedule.
The schedule brings a windfall to the worker in some cases and gross hardship to the worker in others. Although it is argued the schedule has the advantage of simplicity, it is questionable whether that advantage is worth the cost. The result in the present case is indefensible except that it is demanded by an anachronistic statute.