Court Opinion

ID: 9795210
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:22:31.963858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:27:17.365993
License: Public Domain

NEHRING, Justice,
dissenting:
117 I agree with half of the majority's opinion. Section 834A-2-422 of the Utah Code (2005) (section 422) permits Mr. Williams to direct payments from the labor commission to his trust. I disagree, however, with its ultimate conclusion that section 422 forbids employees, like Mr. Williams, to give up the right to change their minds about the direction of their payments.1 I find noth*1195ing in the language of section 422 that suggests that an employee's control of payments should be restricted in this way.
18 The majority reasons that section 422 allows an employee to direct payments to a trust because the decision to do so is a manifestation of the employee's right to "control" the disposition of payments. I am not persuaded, however, that section 422 bars employees from exercising their control over the direction of payments to a trust in the form of an irrevocable decision. A persuasive analytical rationale for prohibiting an employee from making an irrevocable choice to direct payments to a trust might be crafted, but not with the concept of employee "control" at its core.
T19 The conceptual flaw in the majority analysis is exposed in one key sentence of the opinion. In it, the majority proposes that "Iwlhile the Commission may send an employee's benefit payments to a trust when so directed by the employee, it does not follow that the Commission can be forced to send payments to a trust against the wishes of the employee." Supro 112 (emphasis in original). I have no quarrel with this proposition as an abstraction. It is, however, a proposition of dubious application to this case. This is so because its conclusion-that the Commission cannot be forced to direct payments against the wishes of Mr. Williams-is wholly dependent on the unproven assumption that Mr. Williams' wishes were not conclusively expressed in his Irrevocable Letter of Direction. Were the Commission to act against Mr. Williams' wishes, it would deny him the control over the direction of his proceeds guaranteed by section 422. Left unanswered in the majority's analysis is the question of why Mr. Williams' execution of the Irrevocable Letter of Direction is a lesser manifestation of his right to control the direction of proceeds than his later renunciation of the Letter. If a satisfactory answer to this question exists, I do not believe it can be found in the plain language of section 422.
20 An important aspect of control is the ability to bind oneself. If, at the time a continuous future stream of compensation is guaranteed to the employee, he is told that he is free to direct the payments as he sees fit, but that he cannot do so irrevocably, then the employee's beneficial use and control has been restricted. There may be good reasons why the legislature may wish to limit an employee's choices concerning the post-receipt disposition of compensation proceeds. The protections afforded periodic payments in the Structured Settlement Protection Act, Utah Code Ann. §§ 78-59-101 to -108 (2002), is one example of how additional safeguards against creditors can be accomplished. Such restrictions on the employee's range of choices concerning the fate of compensation proceeds should, in my view, actually appear in unambiguous statutory language. Try as I might, I am unable to discover them in section 422.

. I understand that the majority opinion does not explicitly say that an employee cannot direct funds in perpetuity through an irrevocable letter of direction. Rather, it concludes that a third-party beneficiary cannot enforce such a letter. This distinction is functionally irrelevant because the practical effect of forbidding the beneficiary of an irrevocable letter of direction to enforce that agreement is identical to not allowing the employee to bind himself. Either way, the beneficiary loses its benefit. This is so because were we to conclude, as I believe we should, that such an irrevocable letter would be valid and enforceable, the labor commission would presumably honor it, and any dispute would necessarily arise *1195between the employee and the commission or the employee and the third-party beneficiary.