Court Opinion

ID: 9688263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:41:54.94815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:36.981607
License: Public Domain

FINE, J.
(dissenting). On May 3, 1990, the Labor and Industry Review Commission decided the worker's compensation claim filed by John E. Beverly. The Commission framed the issue before it thusly:
The parties [Beverly, Beverly's employer, and National Union and Twin City Fire Insurance Company (the employer's worker's compensation carriers)] disputed whether [Beverly] suffered a mental injury caused by work and the nature and extent of such injury.
The Commission concluded that Beverly had, indeed, suffered a work-related mental injury, and that since the *843"date of first wage loss due to the occupational disease occurred on April 23, 1981, when National Union Fire Insurance insured the employer," National Union was responsible for Beverly's disability benefits. National Union and the employer sought review by the circuit court, alleging that they were "aggrieved by [the commission]'s May 3,1990[,] decision and seek judicial review of [the commission]'s findings and order."
The majority affirms the trial court's dismissal of National Union's complaint because the majority agrees with the trial court that Twin City is an "adverse party" under section 102.23(1)(a), Stats., and therefore should have been made a defendant. The majority apparently recognizes that Twin City is not actually adverse to National Union vis-a-vis National Union's circuit-court action, however. Indeed, the majority admits that National Union and Twin City never took positions that were adverse to one another.1 Nevertheless, the majority pegs Twin City's "adversity" on "Twin City's possible exposure to payment of benefits," majority op. at 839 (emphasis added), and, because of Beverly's "conditional answer . . . with cross or counter claim," Twin City's potential adversity to Beverly, ibid. The majority's excursion into the hypothetical is not warranted by either the statute or interpretive case law, and I respectfully dissent.

 "The thrust of both National Union and Twin City's defenses to' Beverly's claim was that his trauma was related solely to his Vietnam experience and not incidental to or arising out of his employment with Miller, and hence, not an injury compensable under ch. 102, Stats." Majority op. at 836 n.6.