Court Opinion

ID: 9710130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:02:50.231013+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:16:32.853087
License: Public Domain

CAPPY, Justice,
dissenting.
The question before the court in this matter is whether a claimant under the Workers’ Compensation Act (the Act)1 who seeks and acquires work, after being laid off by his employer, is required to quit his new job and resume his preinjury position when offered him by his former employer or risk losing future workers’ compensation benefits. I would find the Claimant is not required to quit his new job, and, thus, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
Because I believe that the majority does not adequately frame the issue we are to be deciding in this appeal, I will set *640forth the factual and procedural background in this dissent in order to make the issue clear.2
Claimant in this matter suffered a work-related injury to his back on October 31, 1989 and subsequently received workers’ compensation benefits until he signed a final receipt on December 7, 1989 and returned to work with Employer. After reinjuring his back at work on January 1, 1990, Claimant’s workers’ compensation benefits were reinstated pursuant to a supplemental agreement dated January 15, 1990. Once Claimant was released to work by his treating physician, he signed a second final receipt on April 10,1990, but was laid off effective April 5, 1990 as part of a massive lay-off by Employer. After being unemployed for slightly over two months and receiving unemployment compensation benefits from April of 1990 to June of 1990, Claimant was able to secure employment as a car salesman on June 9, 1990. When, two days after Claimant started this new job, Employer offered Claimant his pre-injury job, Claimant rejected the offer. Claimant was not a successful car salesman, however, and he was terminated after only two weeks on the job for failure to sell enough cars. He was likewise unsuccessful at his subsequent sales job with Sosmetal, Inc., and, thus, in October of 1991, he again found himself receiving unemployment compensation. In November of 1991, Claimant sought to set aside the April 10, 1990 final receipt and sought reinstatement of his benefits as of April 10, 1990, when he was laid off upon his return to work.
The referee held that Claimant was entitled to reinstatement of his worker’s compensation benefits, but only through June 11, 1990, because on that date, Claimant voluntarily refused to accept Employer’s offer of employment for reasons unrelated to his work-related injury, citing Dugan v. W.C.A.B. (Fuller Co.), 131 Pa.Cmwlth. 218, 569 A.2d 1038 (1990).3 As *641for the two days when Claimant was employed as a car salesman prior to rejecting Employer’s offer, June 9 and 10, 1990, the referee awarded partial disability benefits.
The Board found the referee committed harmless error by relying on Dugan because that case was factually distinguishable from the present scenario. The Board nevertheless upheld the referee’s suspension of benefits as of June 11,1990 on the basis that Claimant’s refusal to accept Employer’s job offer was for reasons unrelated to his disability. Further, the Board rejected Claimant’s argument that he had a right to reinstatement of benefits as of October 23, 1991, when Claimant was examined by Dr. Paul Hoover, who is a certified physical medicine and rehabilitation expert. The Board held that Dr. Hoover’s testimony supported a finding that Claimant has remained partially disabled, but not that Claimant’s condition of total disability recurred on October 23,1991.
Citing Pieper v. Ametek-Thermox Instruments Division, 526 Pa. 25, 584 A.2d 301 (1990), the Commonwealth Court stated that in order to succeed on his petition to reinstate benefits, Claimant bore the burden of proving that: 1) through no fault of his own, Claimant’s earning power was once again adversely affected by his injury; and 2) the injury which gave rise to Claimant’s original claim continued.
Citing this Court’s opinion in Dillon v. W.C.A.B. (Greenwich Collieries), 536 Pa. 490, 640 A.2d 386 (1994), the Commonwealth Court reasoned that both the capacity of the Claimant to work and the availability of work affect the extent of the injured Claimant’s loss of earning power. The Commonwealth Court affirmed the Board’s decision, recognizing that Claimant proved that he continues to have some residual effects of his work-related injury, but concluding that because Claimant *642voluntarily rejected Employer’s offer to return to his preinjury-job for reasons unrelated to his work injury, he failed to meet the Pieper standard for reinstatement of his benefits.
Neither party disputes the referee’s grant of Claimant’s petition to set aside his April 10,1990 final receipt. Nor is the referee’s grant of Claimant’s petition to reinstate his disability benefits commencing April 10,1990 challenged herein. See 77 P.S. § 772. What is in dispute is the referee’s conclusion, affirmed by the Board and the Commonwealth Court, that this reinstatement of benefits be only until June 11, 1990, the date when Claimant rejected Employer’s offer to return to his preinjury job, and that Claimant’s benefits be suspended as of June 11, 1990.
The majority acknowledges that Claimant here continues to suffer from his work-related back injury which gave rise to his original claim for compensation, satisfying the second part of the Pieper standard. The majority concludes, however, that Claimant has failed to meet the requirement of Pieper that he show that, through no fault of his own, his earning power is once again adversely affected by his injury.
The majority opinion concludes that Claimant’s “loss of earnings did not result from his work injury but rather was due to the fact that he obtained alternative employment from which he was terminated.” The majority reasons that Claimant’s earning power was adversely affected by his termination from the sales employment he took after being laid off by Employer; Claimant’s work-related back injury did not affect his ability to perform this sales employment and his termination from this employment; and, therefore, Claimant’s earning power is not adversely affected by his work-related injury.
As a result, the majority creates an additional requirement to Pieper that, where a claimant seeking reinstatement of his worker’s compensation benefits has secured new employment after being laid off from his job by his employer and loses that new employment, he must show a causal connection between his prior work-related injury and his loss of this new employment in order to show his injury is once again adversely *643affecting his earning power. I dissent from the majority’s reasoning here as it represents a departure from Pieper -with which I cannot agree.
In Pieper, the claimant sought reinstatement of his suspended worker’s compensation benefits. As in the instant matter, the claimant in Pieper had suffered a work-related back injury for which he received worker’s compensation benefits, and, after returning to work full-time with his employer, had been laid off and receiving unemployment compensation benefits.
We held in Pieper that the claimant did not have to establish a causal connection between his prior work-related injury and his present disability in order to be eligible for reinstatement of his worker’s compensation benefits but had to meet the two prongs of the standard set forth supra. The continuance of the claimant’s work-related back injury in Pieper was established. We ruled in Pieper that the earning power of the claimant was “once again affected by his disability” where he proved that he no longer received unemployment compensation and was only able to maintain a part-time job as a bartender at a reduced income.4
The majority in the present case turns to language in section 413 of the Worker’s Compensation Act, 77 P.S. § 772, and Harle v. W.C.A.B. (Telegraph Press), 540 Pa. 482, 658 A.2d 766 (1995), in an attempt to buttress the requirement it is placing on Claimant here.
The language from section 413 quoted by the majority states:
... That where compensation has been suspended because the employe’s earnings are equal to or in excess of his wages prior to the injury that payments under the agreement or award may be resumed at any time during the period for which compensation for partial disability is pay*644able, unless it be shown that the loss in earnings does not result from the disability due to the injury.
I do not find this language supportive of the majority’s imposition of a causal connection here. The above-quoted language from section 413 addresses a situation “where compensation has been suspended because the employe’s earnings are equal to or in excess of his wages prior to the injury.” Such is not the case in the present matter. Further, quoting this portion of section 413 lends no answer to the issue of whether the Claimant’s earning power is once again adversely affected by his work-related injury. Moreover, I find Harle equally unsupportive of the majority’s position. The claimant in Harle had injured his thumb at work. He received worker’s compensation benefits, and, when he was released by his physician to return to light duty work, his employer had ceased conducting business. The employer in Harle filed a termination petition asserting the claimant’s disability had ceased. The Commonwealth Court found that the claimant’s medical disability had not entirely ceased, and that, since the claimant’s pre-injury position was not available and the claimant had obtained a similar position elsewhere at a lower wage, modification of benefits to partial disability was appropriate. This court vacated the Commonwealth Court’s remand of the matter for calculation of partial disability benefits, instead ordering the matter remanded to the Board with instructions that the claimant’s benefits be suspended.5
Our reason for finding suspension of the claimant’s benefits appropriate in Harle was that since the claimant continued to suffer residual physical impairment from his injury, he could, in the future, if his earning power were to be affected by the residual impairment from his injury, seek reinstatement of partial disability benefits by proving the Pieper standard for reinstatement of suspended benefits. We did not, in Harle, address what proof the claimant would have to present in such *645a future proceeding to establish that his earning power was once again adversely affected by his injury.
Importantly, at the time Claimant rejected Employer’s offer, his earning power was not adversely affected by his back injury because he was employed as a car salesman and his back injury did not affect his employment. When Claimant rejected Employer’s offer, made only two days into Claimant’s new employment, Claimant believed he had secured new employment as a car salesman and feared being injured again at Employer’s job. The majority penalizes Claimant for rejecting Employer’s offer to return to his pre-injury employment and for being an unsuccessful salesman. By creating the causal connection requirement, the majority fails to conduct any inquiry into the Claimant’s capacity to work and availability of work, matters which we have previously stated in Dillon affect the extent of an injured employe’s loss of earning power.
As to Claimant’s capacity to work, Claimant proved to the Board that he has remained partially disabled from his work-related back injury, and that this disability still continues. There is no finding by the referee that Employer sustained its burden of proving availability of a job Claimant is capable of performing. See supra n. 3. The referee did not make any findings, however, as to how long Claimant, after he was terminated from his sales employment, received unemployment compensation. Thus, I vigorously dissent and would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court and remand to the referee for reinstatement of partial disability benefits to Claimant.

. Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, as amended, 77 P.S. § 1 ef seq.

. Contrary to the majority's framing of the issue as a suspension matter, the appellant in this appeal is seeking reinstatement of workers' compensation benefits, and it is whether he carried his burden of proof as to his entitlement to reinstatement of these benefits when he was no longer employed which we are addressing herein.

. Dugan involved a contested claim petition filed by a claimant who had suffered chest pains at work and was later diagnosed as having *641suffered a myocardial infarction. At the hearing on this petition before the referee in Dugan, the claimant testified that he was not attempting to obtain employment because he was retired. The Commonwealth Court in Dugan held that workmen's compensation benefits were properly awarded and suspended as of the date when Claimant retired, reasoning that Claimant’s loss of earnings was not caused by his physical disability but by his voluntary retirement and withdrawal from the labor market.

. We noted in Pieper that the burden is upon the employer to rebut the claimant's proof of loss of earnings by establishing the availability of work claimant is capable of performing. Pieper, 526 Pa. at 34, n. 8, 584 A.2d at 305, n. 8.

. While the author of this dissent joined this court's opinion in Harle, this joinder certainly was not intended as a joinder in the reasoning the majority here is now finding in Harle.