Court Opinion

ID: 9490603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:48:57.388305+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:12.309701
License: Public Domain

K.K. HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With all respect to my colleagues in the majority, I do not believe that Congress intended that workers unfortunate enough to have been injured in a foreign land have the final resolution of their claims take months or years longer than those filed by workers in this country who suffer identical injuries. That is, however, precisely the fate that awaits DBA claimants, who alone will be compelled to rehearse their arguments before the district court prior to the inevitable appeal.
“In the rare cases [in which] the literal application of a statute will produce a result demonstrably at odds with the intentions of its drafters ... the intention of the drafters, rather than the strict language, controls.” United States v. Ron Pair Enters., Inc., 489 U.S. 235, 242, 109 S.Ct. 1026, 1030, 103 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Congress amended the LHWCA in 1972 to completely restructure the claims review process, and there is no substantial reason to believe that it did not intend the entire package to apply to the federal benefit programs incorporating the Act’s provisions. Prior to 1972, claims made pursuant to the DBA were reviewed in the same manner as those arising under the LHWCA or the various other workers’ compensation schemes; why would Congress have suddenly decided to treat these similar types of claims in a radically different manner?
The answer, of course, is that Congress did not so decide. It expected, and rightly so, that an amendment of the LHWCA would be, in essence, an amendment of all the compensation statutes; it likely did not anticipate that the DBA’s provision “modifying” certain aspects of the LHWCA as it existed in 1941 would be construed to frustrate its continuing efforts, some thirty years later, to ensure that the review process is fairly and consistently administered with respect to all claimants.
I would adopt the approach of the Ninth Circuit in Pearce. See ante at 806. Claims under the DBA for injuries sustained overseas ought to be subject to initial judicial review in the court of appeals for the circuit within which is located the office of the District Director whose compensation order is at issue. Because this case involves an order of the District Director for the Fourth Compensation District, whose office is in Baltimore, Maryland, I believe that we have the jurisdiction to consider Mr. Lee’s appeal.
I respectfully dissent.