Court Opinion

ID: 9720445
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:31:05.4153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:18.341353
License: Public Domain

HUSPENI, Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree with my colleagues that the full recovery rule bars the exercise of appellant’s subrogation rights under the facts of this ease. My analysis of the applicable law, however, differs somewhat from that of the majority.
Appellant here relies heavily on Paine v. Water Works Supply Co., 269 N.W.2d 725 (Minn.1978) to argue its entitlement to sub-rogation against respondent’s recovery from the third party tortfeasor. Subrogation was permitted in Paine, I submit, not because the equitable doctrine of full recovery was inapplicable there, but because the same damages existed in both the workers’ compensation and dram shop actions:
[Widow] is to receive worker’s compensation dependency benefits measured by a percentage of her husband’s daily wage * * * in order to compensate her for loss of her means of support. Loss of means of support is also precisely the element of damages compensated to a widow under the Dram Shop Act.
Id. at 731.
While Cooper v. Younkin, 339 N.W.2d 552 (Minn.1983) involves a workers’ compensation subrogation claim and contains a discussion of the equitable doctrine of full recovery, I am not certain that Cooper is controlling on that issue. The holding of Cooper was, in essence, that a workers’ compensation carrier was not entitled to subrogation against proceeds received by an employee in the settlement of an uninsured motorist’s claim. That principle was stated earlier in Paine, and appellant does not challenge it in this case. While there is instructive language in Cooper recognizing that an insured is entitled to full compensation before an insurer may exercise a right of subrogation, it seems to me that language may be only dicta.
The language in Westendorf by Westendorf v. Stasson, 330 N.W.2d 699, 703 (Minn.1983), recognizing the equitable principle of full recovery, however, is not dicta. While Westendorf involved a Health Maintenance Organization rather than a workers’ compensation carrier, I am persuaded that the policy considerations of Westen-*904dorf are qualitatively indistinguishable from those present here. Certainly the same cost-containment arguments which might support subrogation in this case were raised and rejected by the supreme court in Westendorf.
I conclude that if, in workers’ compensation matters, the right to full recovery is to bow to the right of subrogation, the legislature, not the courts, should declare that to be the public policy of the state.