Court Opinion

ID: 9692960
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:13:55.901119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:38.371949
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion By
Judge Craig:
The previous decisions of this court interpreting the meretricious relationship disqualification provision of section 307(7) of The Pennsylvania Workmen's Compensation Act, Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, as amended, 77 P.S. §562, in accordance with the interpretation of that concept by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the past, unfortunately mandate the result reached here.
Although section 307(7), in dealing with the disqualification, reads that the board “may” order the termination of compensation payable to the widow, we regrettably are unable to conclude that such permissive language gives the board untrammeled discretion, in order to uphold the understandable decision of the board in this case. In accordance with the principle that courts must construe statutes in order to avoid constitutional infirmity, the Supreme Court has held, in a leading case, that where a statute directs the doing of a thing for the sake of justice, the word “may” means the same as the word “shall” Hotel Casey v. Ross, 343 Pa. 573, 579, 23 A.2d 737, 740 (1942). Our intermediate appellate courts have concurred. Carroll Township v. Jones, 85 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 400, 481 A.2d 1260 (1984), Melnick v. Melnick, 147 Pa. Superior Ct. 564, 25 A.2d 111 (1942). The application of that statutory construction principle is particularly appropriate here. To construe “may” as permissive would allow the board to benefit some surviving spouses and to punish others; without any guidelines to govern such decisions, and to facil*471itate judicial review of the boards choices, the result would be an arbitrary and therefore unconstitutional legislative delegation. The law leaves the board no choice with respect to imposing the meretricious relationship' disqualification.
Nevertheless, there is a need to emphasize the inappropriate nature of that disqualification in todays world and the immediacy of a need for legislative review.
The dictionary definition of “meretricious” is, in its first meaning, “of or relating to a prostitute: having a harlots traits. . . .” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary p. 1413-14 (1966). Even though the legislature has amended section 307(7) now to mention “widower” as well as “widow,” continued application of the “meretricious relationship” doctrine has a definitely anti-female thrust. The concept suggests an insupportable view that every woman is an economically dependent creature who lives with a man out of wedlock in order to derive support from his masculine — i.e., economically productive — role in the world.
If the deprivation of a widow’s compensation benefits were based solely on the idea that the widow, in sharing living quarters with a man, was thus obtaining an economic replacement for worker compensation benefits, equivalent to remarriage, without any moral judgment being assessed, then the sanction logically could only be a suspension of benefits, not a termination of them. However, the termination sanction imparts to this provision of law the nature of a punitive bill of attainder. If a widow, after losing her spouse as a consequence of his employment, lives with another man without benefit of wedlock, even temporarily, she loses those benefits forever. The punitive nature of the provision became only more clear when the legislature added widowers to the ranks of those whom the law would punish for their presumed moral transgressions.
Serious legislative reassessment is needed.