Court Opinion

ID: 9791978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:21:29.902495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.945510
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
Although I am concurring in the majority opinion, I have not yet fully brought myself to wholeheartedly embrace the majority’s rejection of the two part test announced in Mapusaga in favor of a return to the objective test this Court announced in earlier cases. The Mapusaga two part test was the Court’s response reflective of the legislature’s 1981 amendment of I.C. § 72-332(2). The Mapusaga test therefore reflects the statutory law, and hence is substantive rather than procedural. Substantive law is mine, sayeth the legislature; procedural rules belongeth to the Court. Presently I am not as fully persuaded, as I would prefer to be, that this Court providently usurps the legislative function.
As our opinion points out, I.C. § 72-332(2) now states that permanent physical impairment “shall be interpreted subjectively as to the particular employee involved,____” (Emphasis added.) And, as is also pointed out, the Mapusaga majority opinion explained the subjective test, and also gave its reasons for rejecting the objective test in this way:
However, the legislature has changed the emphasis from any claimant to the specific claimant involved. Under the objective test, a particular claimant who is not hindered by an impairment could still qualify for permanent disability as long as the same impairment on a hypothetical claimant could be considered a hindrance____ Now, the nature of the inquiry shifts from a hypothetical claimant to the actual claimant involved.
Mapusaga, 113 Idaho at 847, 748 P.2d at 1377.
The only reason now offered for our rejection of the two part test of Mapusaga *175is the supposed fact that “[t]here is no evidence to support the theory that in 1981 the legislature intended to have “permanent physical impairment” interpreted according to whether the claimant considered the condition a hindrance.” 117 Idaho at 171, 786 P.2d at 562. Yet, our opinion goes on to say, in the same paragraph, that is not what Mapusaga should be read as saying:
There is evidence in the form of the Commission’s consistent interpretation before Curtis and Gugelman that when the legislature used “subjectively,” it intended to return the focus to the particular worker, not just to the particular worker’s state of mind. This Court’s own statement in Mapusaga of the purpose of the new subsection (shifting from the hypothetical claimant to the actual claimant) verifies this construction.
Id. (Emphasis added.)
The final instance in which Mapusaga may be misinterpreted is summed up in one line of the opinion: “Whether the claimant considered the condition to be a hindrance should not be determinative.” 117 Idaho at 171, 786 P.2d at 562. This has never been the case, under the Mapusaga two part test or the objective test. The Mapusaga test appropriately makes the claimant’s interpretation of and ability to cope with the impairment an initial issue; but Mapusaga does not make this the controlling or determinative issue.
It may be that the trial bar over the next series of compensation cases will shed additional light which encourages me in this rather drastic shortening of Mapusaga’s life span.