Court Opinion

ID: 9692466
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 15:54:54.716758+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:34.668428
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
concurring in Part and dissenting in Part.
I concur with the modified majority opinion except insofar as it remands the case to the Hancock Circuit Court with directions to compute the amounts that must be deducted from the judgment in order to preclude a double recovery by Appellant. The modified majority opinion cites no authority for this unnecessary procedure. Appellant, in his Petition for Rehearing, cited only Whittaker v. Hardin, 32 S.W.3d 497 (Ky.2000), and Mastin v. Liberal Markets, 674 S.W.2d 7 (Ky.1984), both of which hold that the plaintiff is entitled to have a trier of fact allocate elements of damages that should be credited. Whittaker, 32 S.W.3d at 498; Mastin, 674 S.W.2d at 14.
Whittaker was an appeal from a workers’ compensation case in which the employer/insurer sought credit for amounts received by the claimant in settlement of a civil action against the third-party tortfea-sor. The claimant had received a lump sum settlement with no allocation to specific categories of damages. Whittaker, 32 S.W.3d at 498. Thus, no independent fact-finder had ever determined how much of the lump sum tort settlement corresponded with the amounts and categories of benefits awarded in the workers’ compensation claim. Whittaker held that an Administrative Law Judge had jurisdiction to make those findings under KRS 342.325. Id. at 499. Mastin was an appeal from a circuit court order denying enforcement of a workers’ compensation award. Mastin, 674 S.W.2d at 8-9. See KRS 342.305. The claimant had settled her tort action against one of the third-party tortfeasors pursuant to a-settlement agreement that allocated damages by categories, but allocated most of the damages to pain and suffering, Mastin, 674 S.W.2d at 9, a category for which there is no corresponding workers’ compensation recovery.
The preclusion against double recovery applies only insofar as a category of damages recovered in the tort settlement duplicates a category of benefits awarded in the workers’ compensation award or settlement. Id. at 12-14; Hillman v. Am. Mut. Liab. Ins. Co., 631 S.W.2d 848, 850 (Ky.1982). In Mastín, the employer was not a party to the tort settlement, thus had not concurred in the allocation of damages. Mastín held that the employer was entitled to have an independent factfinder hear evidence and allocate the damages in order to determine the amount creditable against the workers’ compensation award. Mastin, 674 S.W.2d at 14. Mastin also agreed with the claimant’s argument that the tort settlement might represent less than her actual damages as determined by an independent factfinder,1 and that if the factfinder found that the settlement represented’less than her actual damages, the *165employer/insurer was entitled to a credit only against its proportional share of the total damages. Id. at 13. Mastin remanded the case to the circuit court to hear evidence, make appropriate findings of fact, and apply those facts to the legal principles set forth in the opinion. Id. at 15.2
Here, except for one item in the settlement that might allow Commonwealth an additional credit (see note 3, infra),- we already know exactly how much Appellant was paid in workers’ compensation benefits and the categories of those payments. We also know exactly how much Appellant was awarded in his judgment against Commonwealth and the categories of those damages. Whether a category of workers’ compensation benefits corresponds to a category of damages awarded in a judgment is a question of law, not fact; thus, a remand to the circuit court for additional findings of fact is unnecessary in this case. In the interest of judicial economy, we can and should determine now what categories of workers’ compensation benefits received should be credited against the judgment and perform the simple task of subtraction ourselves, thus avoiding yet another round of expensive and time-consuming appeals. That is precisely what we did in AIK Selective Self Insurance Fund v. Bush, 74 S.W.3d 251 (Ky.2002), with respect to amounts that were known to have been received and paid. Id. at 258. We only remanded to the circuit court the task of allocating credits with respect to amounts that were unknown or might not have been paid — thus required the production of additional evidence. Id. Here, both the eate-gories of damages in the tort judgment and the categories of benefits awarded by the workers’ compensation board have already been determined by an independent factfinder — the jury with respect to the judgment and the ALJ with respect to the workers’ compensation award. There are no unknown amounts or categories requiring additional findings of fact, thus no reason for a remand.
The amounts to be credited against the judgment aré, of course, subject to the 75% limit required by the jury’s comparative fault finding. AIK v. Bush, 74 S.W.3d at 253-55; U.S. Fid. & Guar. Co. v. Fox, 872 S.W.2d 91, 93-94 (Ky.App.1993). Applying the principles set forth in those cases and in Mastin and Hillman, the entire judgment for permanent impairment ($7,500.00) must be vacated because it is duplicated in its entirety by 75% of the workers’ compensation payments for permanent partial disability benefits ($30,-456.68 X 0.75 = $22,842.51); and the entire judgment for lost wages ($7,500.00) must be vacated because it is duplicated in its entirety by 75% of the workers’ compensation payments for temporary total disability benefits ($18,240.57 X 0.75 = $13,680.43). Hillman, 631 S.W.2d at 850; Fox, 872 S.W.2d at 93-94. The entire judgment for medical expenses ($13,-253.27) must be reduced by 75% of the workers’ compensation payments paid for medical expenses ($15,292.15 X 0.75 = $11,469.11), leaving a judgment for medical expenses in the amount of $1,784.16.3 AIK, 74 S.W.3d at 258. There can be no reduction of the $7,300.00 judgment for pain and suffering because that item of *166damages is not covered by workers’ compensation. Hillman, 631 S.W.2d at 850. Nor can there be any reduction of the judgment because of the additional sums paid to Appellant for waivers of future medical expenses, the right to reopen, and vocational rehabilitation, since none of those items were included in the judgment.
Accordingly, I would not remand this case to the Hancock Circuit Court but would simply vacate those portions of the judgment that duplicate workers’ compensation payments received, leaving a total judgment of $9,084.16, plus costs and interest.
JOHNSTONE, and ROACH, JJ., join this opinion.

. Such often occurs when the plaintiff settles for the tortfeasor’s liability insurance policy limits which are less than the plaintiffs actual damages.

. One of those legal principles was that the employer/insurer was not entitled to credit for the workers' compensation attorney fee that it commuted from the "back end” of the award and paid to the claimant’s attorney pursuant to KRS 342.320(2). Mastin, 674 S.W.2d at 12. Since the employer/insurer in this case could not have recovered the attorney fee, if any, paid to Appellant’s workers’ compensation attorney, any such payment would play no role in determining credits in this case.

. The record does not reflect whether the remaining $1,784.16 in medical expenses were included in the $4,500.00 buyout of fu*166ture medical expenses. (Plaintiffs exhibit no. 1, which apparently contained an itemization of medical expenses, is not in the record on appeal. This is the only possible issue that might be resolved on remand. However, if Commonwealth believed it was entitled to a credit for this item, it could have supplemented the record on appeal with that information. It chose not to do so. By remanding this case, the modified majority opinion gives Commonwealth a second bite at the apple on this issue.)