Court Opinion

ID: 9634331
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:08:54.762453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:00.578467
License: Public Domain

HUTCHINSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I join Mr. Chief Justice Roberts in his view that Heffner v. Allstate Insurance Company, 491 Pa. 447, 421 A.2d 629 (1980), was wrongly decided and should be overruled. Moreover, even accepting the majority view that Heffner is the law and correctly interprets our No-fault Insurance Act, I write to express my concern with the statement in the Superior Court opinion that it sees no difficulty in calculating the work loss of a minor child without earnings history *230under the provisions of Section 205(c) of our act. As Mr. Justice Larsen, writing for the majority, states in his opinion, (slip op. p. 224) we must “take into account all of the requirements which necessitate the showing of the loss claimed.”
Unlike Superior Court, I read Section 205 as subject to a threshold requirement that a plaintiff show a reasonable likelihood of earnings within the statutory periods set forth in Section 106(c)(1) of the act. Once again assuming Heffner to be the law, I would join the majority in remanding this case to Common Pleas only because we are unable in its procedural posture of demurrer to determine whether the eleven year old minor decedent would accrue any work loss within the limitations of the No-fault Act.
Accrued is used in the No-fault Act in the accounting sense of fixed and determined to the extent that it can be taken as due. Wages are accrued only when they are earned and so certain to become due that they can be taken into account. In accounting parlance, the contingency of a child’s future earnings may be noted on a financial statement but they cannot be taken into account as accrued. Such a loss is contingent, not sustained.
Section 106(a)(1) states that loss is due and payable not at the time of the injury but as economic detriment is sustained.
Section 102(a)(6) of the act further states that a victim is to receive a reasonable amount of work loss. However, the reasonable amount he can recover from the no-fault insurer includes only those losses which have been sustained at the time his claim is filed. We cannot determine whether any losses were sustained at the time this claim was filed.
Section 103 says that all basic loss benefits are “subject to any applicable limitations, ... or other terms and conditions” provided in the act. Since work loss benefits are basic loss benefits they are subject to the two-year limitations period set forth in Section 106(c)(1) and the four-year statute of repose also set forth therein. Thus, the plaintiff *231in cases such as this must allege facts and produce record evidence to show that the minor decedent had sustained or would sustain work loss at a time within either the two-year limitations period built into the act by Section 106(c)(1) or the four-year statute of repose provided in that same subsection.
Moreover, to interpret the statute as Superior Court suggests would guarantee recovery of work loss in the maximum amount provided in Section 202(b), 40 P.S. § 1009.202(b), of the No-fault Act by all decedents without regard to their work history. Such a result would be plainly wrong and was never intended by the Legislature. No pious reference to remedial purposes or maximum feasible restoration of all individuals injured in motor vehicle accidents can disguise the fact that the Legislature also enacted no-fault to keep the cost of auto insurance at a reasonable level. It would fly in the face of that purpose to guarantee maximum work loss recovery in each death case, plus survivor’s loss where there is a dependent,1 and then permit recovery in tort for any additional sum that a jury may award on the basis of the same actuarial evidence.
Under the provisions of our No-fault Act as interpreted in Heffner, I do not believe either the estate or any other representative of an eleven-year-old minor with no earnings record is entitled to work loss benefits. Work loss benefits are a subclass of no-fault basic loss benefits. Basic loss benefits are paid only as they accrue. It would be wrong and contrary to the statute to award work loss benefits to a minor who has no earnings record, merely because a minor with a normal life expectancy would be statistically likely to have earnings in excess of $15,000.
Of course, the law must recognize such contingencies. Our statute does so through the tort actions which are preserved by Section 301. Taken together Sections 301 and 202 of our No-fault Act permit a jury to allow the estate of a decedent without a work history to recover in tort for *232future economic loss based on actuarial evidence. Section 301 permits recovery in tort for damages of the type sought here and Section 202 limits work loss, as defined in Section 103, to losses accrued within the time limits set forth in the statute. The benefits that this decedent’s estate seeks are recoverable in tort on a fault theory and not as work loss under our No-fault Act because they have not accrued within the time limits the act sets forth. See Mr. Justice Flaherty’s opinion in Kamperis v. Nationwide, 503 Pa. 536, 469 A.2d 1382 (1983).
ROBERTS, C.J., joins in this opinion.

. See our recent decision in Chester v. Government Employees Insurance Co., 503 Pa. 292, 469 A.2d 560 (1983).