Court Opinion

ID: 9761823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:55:57.728576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:01:54.256391
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice, dissenting.
I dissent. For the reasons stated in my concurring opinion in Kachinski v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (Vepco Construction Co.), 516 Pa. 240, 532 A.2d 374 (1987), I do not accept the majority’s evidentiary “guidelines” set forth therein and applied in the instant appeal to the detriment of appellee Margaret M. Farkaly.
Prior to the majority’s pronouncement in Kachinski, the Commonwealth Court and the workmen’s compensation authorities were, in employer modification petition cases, guided by this Court’s decisions in Barrett v. Otis Elevator Co., 431 Pa. 466, 246 A.2d 668 (1968) and Unora v. Glen Alden *261Coal Co., 377 Pa. 7, 104 A.2d 104 (1954). As the majority acknowledged in Kachinski, 516 Pa. at 252, 532 A.2d at 380, these prior decisions of this Court required that “the referrals by the employer must be tailored to the claimant’s abilities, Unora, supra...” Accordingly, the Commonwealth Court, interpreting Barrett and Unora, held in Kachinski and in the instant case that:
An employer, or its insurance carrier, seeking to modify a workmen’s compensation agreement and asserting that a claimant’s disability is no longer total has the burden to prove that the claimant’s condition of disability has abated and that work is available which the claimant is capable of doing. Barrett v. Otis Elevator Co., 431 Pa. 446, 246 A.2d 668 (1968)____ The work proposed for a partially disabled claimant must be actually available, that is, in fact within his reach, and it must be brought to his notice by the employer. A position may be found to be actually available, or within the claimant’s reach, only if it can be performed by the claimant, having regard to his physical restrictions and limitations, his age, his intellectual capacity, his education, his previous work experience, and other relevant considerations, such as his place of residence. The employer does not have to produce a job offer, ... but positions which are pie-in-the-sky, often described by vocational experts as sedentary or light or requiring little lifting, do not without additional description of their physical demands, establish actual availability of work which a claimant with particular physical limitations can do____
91 Pa.Cmwlth. 543, 498 A.2d 36, 38-39 (1985) (emphasis added; citations omitted), quoted in Farkaly, supra 91 Pa.Cmwlth. at 572-74, 498 A.2d at 34-35.
Applying those principles and guidelines to the instant case, the Commonwealth Court further stated:
A medical doctor produced by the employer testified that the claimant could perform the duties of the Picture Barn job in response to a hypothetical question, to which claimant’s counsel objected as requiring the witness to *262assume facts not in evidence, to wit, that the worker could sit or stand as needed. This privilege is not mentioned in the personnel consultant’s description of the position. The employer’s medical witness approved the position at Paramount Carpet Care Center, but his understanding of the duties of this position was sketchier than the personnel consultant’s description which we have reproduced.
The record descriptions of the two positions that the referee found to be available do not inform whether the claimant would have to sit or stand for long periods of time, reach above her shoulders, lift more than ten pounds or. push or pull heavy weights, all limitations upon the claimant’s abilities to which the referee found her to be subject.
The evidence does not support the referee’s finding that two positions were within the claimant’s physical capabilities and limitations and the board’s order must therefore be reversed.
91 Pa.Cmwlth. at 576, 498 A.2d at 36.
The majority reverses the Commonwealth Court upon application of the majority’s newly announced evidentiary guidelines in Kachinski. Those guidelines significantly enhance a claimant’s burdens in employer modification petition cases by requiring the claimant to prove, once the employer has shown that her medical condition has improved and that she has been given a job referral in the general occupational category for which she has received medical clearance, that she is not able to perform a particular job because of the specific requirements of the job and her peculiar physical limitations. In effect, the majority penalizes appellee for failing to meet the claimant’s enhanced evidentiary burden announced by this Court in Kachinski some four and one-half years after the hearings were held before the referee in the instant case. This is unfair to appellee, and it is wholly inappropriate to hold appellee to a burden of proof not in existence at the time of the proceedings before the compensation authorities. At a *263minimum, this Court should remand to the Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board for further proceedings to allow appellee an opportunity to meet her enhanced burden of proof newly enunciated by a majority of this Court in Kachinski.