Court Opinion

ID: 9543467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:45:48.844781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:21.899484
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN, Justice,
with whom COLLINS, Justice, joins, dissenting.
Because I believe the Commission correctly interpreted section 110 and that interpretation should be given deference by the court, I must respectfully dissent.
The Workers’ Compensation Act embodies a comprehensive scheme to provide compensation to an employee whose work-connected injuries adversely affect the employee’s earning capacity and is a complete *1227substitute for all other private remedies.1 Fanion v. McNeal, 577 A.2d 2, 4 (Me.1990). “The purpose of [the Act] is to provide an effective and expeditious means of compensating injured workers for loss of earning capacity.” Ciccotelli v. KTS Industries, 415 A.2d 1091, 1092 (Me.1980). When interpreting the Act, the Commission is mandated to employ a neutral construction that “ensure[s] the efficient delivery of compensation to injured workers at a reasonable cost to employers.” 39 M.R.S.A. § 94-A(3) (1989). The interpretation of a single provision of the Act cannot take place in isolation. Any specific provision must of necessity be construed within the context of the entire statutory scheme. Faucher v. City of Auburn, 465 A.2d 1120, 1124 (Me.1983). Moreover, statutory construction is not to be undertaken as an isolated grammatical exercise. “Statutes do not live by words alone. They take on vitality only when read in the transforming light of a real life situation, and the question then becomes what the legislature intended or reasonably would intend the words of the statute to mean when addressed to that particular situation.” Lagasse v. Hannaford Bros. Co., 497 A.2d 1112, 1117 (Me.1985).
The provision of the Act at issue was amended in 1985 to limit an employee’s recovery of attorney fees to cases where the employee “prevails.” 39 M.R.S.A. § 110 (1989). By failing to define the meaning of the term “prevail” as it relates to the time lag between the offer and the petition decision, the Legislature has left it open to interpretation. State v. Philbrick, 402 A.2d 59, 62 (Me.1979). Accordingly, we and the Commission, must seek a meaning that is “consistent with the overall statutory context ... reflects the subject matter of the statute, its purpose, the occasion and necessity of the law and the consequences of a particular interpretation.” Id.
Prior to the amendment, the statute permitted an award of attorney fees in all cases when the employer instituted the proceedings or the employee instituted proceedings on reasonable grounds and in good faith. See 39 M.R.S.A. § 110(1) (applicable to claims arising prior to effective date of amendment). The legislative debate on the amendment reveals that, by the amendment, the Legislature intended to limit the employee’s receipt of attorney fees to those situations where the employee “wins.” Leg.Rec. 1197-98 (1985). There is no indication in either the language of the amendment or the legislative debate that the Legislature intended to depart from the traditional remedial nature of the Act. Accordingly, the language of the statute should be applied in the instant case with a view toward implementing the purposes of the Act.
Here, there was no evidence before the Commission that the employer’s offer to the employee was reasonable or warranted at that time. To the contrary, substantial evidence offered by the employee supports its conclusion that the employee was “probably more than 70% incapacitated at the time of the employer’s January 20, 1989 offer to reduce the employee to a 70% level *1228of incapacity.”2 By the time of the Commission decree, eighteen months later, the employee’s condition had improved only slightly beyond the level of the employer’s offer, as reflected in the finding that the employee “is currently 69% partially incapacitated.” Rather than accepting a premature reduction in benefits that did not properly reflect his loss of earning capacity, the employee rejected the offer. Absent any showing by the employer that the January 1989 reduction offer was supported by a correlative improvement in the employee’s earning capacity, it was not error for the Commission to determine that based on the employee’s reasonable response to the employer’s inadequate offer, the employee had prevailed. See LeBlanc v. United Eng. & Constructors Inc., 584 A.2d 675, 677 (Me.1991) (deferring to the administrative interpretation of the Act when it falls within the special expertise of the Commission).
If, as here, the language of the statute is fairly susceptible to such construction, the court’s interpretation must avoid results that are absurd, inconsistent, unreasonable, or illogical. Cote v. Georgia-Pacific Corp., 596 A.2d 1004, 1005 (Me.1991). To interpret the instant statutory provision to require only a comparison of the employer’s offer in January 1989 with the employee’s incapacity in August 1990, eighteen months later, in determining eligibility for attorney fees incurred for the employee’s representation before the Commission is inconsistent with the Act’s purpose to fairly compensate the employee without unreasonable cost to the employer. Such a construction could unfairly penalize either the employee or the employer for the delay inherent in the petition process by awarding or denying fees based on the intervening improvement or deterioration in the employee’s condition and could unfairly deprive the employee of the wage benefits due him. I cannot agree that this was the legislative intent. See Lagasse, 497 A.2d at 1119 (requiring a “rational justification for such a hypothetical construct”). In my opinion, the Commission’s interpretation of the provision at issue implements the purposes of the Act as mandated by section 94-A(3) and should be given deference by the Court. See LeBlanc, 584 A.2d at 677; Jacobsky v. D’Alfonso & Sons, Inc., 358 A.2d 511, 514-15 (Me.1976). Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the Appellate Division.

. Among the differences between civil litigation seeking damages and a proceeding pursuant to the Workers’ Compensation Act are: civil litigation anticipates damages to be paid to the plaintiff for pain and suffering induced by an injury from the date of injury through the period of the plaintiffs life expectancy; loss of earnings or potential earnings from the date of injury to the date of expected retirement; any property damage proximately caused by the alleged incident; punitive damages if applicable; and damages for a loss of consortium of a spouse if applicable. In addition, M.R.Civ.P. 68 permits an offer of judgment, and the potential assumption by the offeree of costs incurred subsequent to the offer if the final judgment is not more favorable than the offer, prior to any adjudication or binding admission of liability on the part of the offeror.
In contrast, the historical purpose of workers’ compensation is to pay an employee who has suffered a work-connected injury for the employee’s loss of earning capacity only for the period that such loss endures. The employer’s liability for the claimed injury is a prerequisite to section 110(2). The Act provides, inter alia, a procedure allowing wage replacement, notwithstanding the extent or nature of the employee’s residual injuries or continuing pain or suffering flowing from the compensable injury. A spouse has no cognizable claim for loss of consortium flowing from the employee’s injury.

. After reviewing the record, the commissioner made the following findings of fact: the employee testified before the Commission on February 8, 1990 that he was totally unable to work until April of 1989; medical testimony established that the employee did not reach maximum medical improvement until approximately February 27, 1989 and was not released for return to work until April 24, 1989, subject to restrictions; an attempt by the employee to return to his former position in August of 1989 failed because the employee’s vision restriction prevented his safe operation of a truck.