Court Opinion

ID: 9791241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:07:59.953024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.076399
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
I concur in the majority’s disposition of this case, but write separately to suggest to the Court, members of the bar, and interested readers that this case has overruled at least two prior opinions of the Idaho Supreme Court. As is too often the custom in this jurisdiction, the majority denies the existence of the contrary precedent by completely ignoring it. However, I believe that as a sworn caretaker of the laws of this State, I cannot be so carefree with what until now was the law of Idaho. Members of the bar as well as the citizens of Idaho look to this Court for guidance, and we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of contrary and conflicting but unchallenged precedents to exist side by side.
The precedent implicitly targeted by the majority for the jurisprudential junk heap is Martin v. Robert W. Woods Lumber Co., 90 Idaho 105, 408 P.2d 474 (1965), and the authority cited therein. In Martin, this Court affirmed a decision by the Industrial Accident Board. The Board had decided that it did not have jurisdiction to determine whether a certain surety, Argonaut Insurance Company, was liable for an injury that occurred at the Woods Lumber Company. The Court phrased the issue in this manner:
Thus the issue is clearly put for this court: Does the Industrial Accident Board have jurisdiction, once a claim is made to the Board by an employee seeking a workmen’s compensation award, to decide a collateral issue of law of the existence or nonexistence of a contract of insurance between an employer and an insurance company, ... ?
Martin, 90 Idaho at 106-07, 408 P.2d at 475.
Similarly, in today’s opinion the majority frames the issue before the Court by asking a similar question:
In this worker’s compensation case we are called upon to determine whether the Industrial Commission has authority and jurisdiction to hear and order reimbursement between carriers for compensation benefits paid to a claimant.
117 Idaho at 1067, 793 P.2d at 1239. In both today’s opinion and in Martin, the issue raised was the same. That is, does the quasi-judicial body set up by the legislature to “adjudicate” workers’ compensation claims have the jurisdictional power to determine issues related to the workers’ compensation claim? In Martin, the answer was no; in today’s opinion the answer is yes.
The facts of Martin may be quickly stated. The surety had, in the past, automatically renewed coverage to the employer each year. The only contingency on this arrangement was that the employer promptly pay the premium. But when an employee was injured a few hours after the old policy had expired, the surety refused to renew the employer’s coverage. The Industrial Accident Board ruled that the surety’s term bond had indeed expired before the accident occurred, and that no notice of that expiration was required of the surety. The Board held the uninsured employer liable to the employee. However, the Board declined to go beyond that ruling, stating that it had no jurisdiction over the contractual relations between employers and their sureties. The Board then dismissed Argonaut Insurance from the proceedings.
The Court handled this case three times, and issued three separate opinions. The first time the Court affirmed the decision of the Board. Quoting from Thompson v. Liberty National Insurance Co., 78 Idaho 381, 304 P.2d 910 (1956), the Court held that the liability of Argonaut Insurance was a contract question, determinable only by a court of competent jurisdiction. Martin v. Robert W. Woods Lumber Co., 90 Idaho 105, 107, 408 P.2d 474, 475 (1965) *1075(.Martin I). The Court did not consider the Board a court of competent jurisdiction.
The second time the Court reversed the dismissal by the district court of a declaratory judgment action brought to determine the liability of the surety, and remanded the cause to the district court. The district court had dismissed the action because of the appeal then pending from the Industrial Accident Board to the Idaho Supreme Court. Martin v. Argonaut Ins. Co., 90 Idaho 107, 408 P.2d 475 (1965) (Martin II). The third and final opinion of the Court reviewed the district court’s actions on. remand. The district court held Argonaut Insurance liable on an estoppel theory, and this Court affirmed, with directions to add an amount for attorneys’ fees to the judgment. Martin v. Argonaut Ins. Co., 91 Idaho 885, 434 P.2d 103 (1967) (Martin III).
The case precedent that is now of no authority includes just the first of the three Martin cases, Martin I, and the authority cited therein, i.e., Thompson v. Liberty Insurance. In Thompson the Court remarked that:
The controversy here is not one in which the injured workman is in anywise interested. The liability having been paid by the employer prior to the Industrial Accident Board hearing, the contract relationship of the employer and the surety was no longer a subject of controversy for the Board to determine.
78 Idaho at 384, 304 P.2d at 911. For that reason the Martin I Court held that the issue of whether coverage had been properly cancelled by the surety prior to the accident was not an issue for the Board to determine. Today’s opinion changes all that. The majority opinion informs us that Fireman’s Fund paid all benefits to the injured employee and was now seeking reimbursement from Aetna. Just as in Thompson and Martin I, “[t]he controversy here is not one in which the injured workman is in anywise interested.” Nonetheless, today's opinion finally places in the hands of the Industrial Commission the power it should have had all along to adjudicate the issues intertwined with a workers’ compensation claim.
I now call on my fellow justices, judges, and members of the bar in the worthwhile enterprise of ferreting out contrary and conflicting doctrines and precedents. As an attorney intimately involved in the Martin litigation, I could not help but recall the history of that case and its holding. But there are many other such cases, conflicting with more recent opinions, which are in effect snakes in the high grass of jurisprudence. Such snakes cannot not be tolerated, unless the “luxury” of picking and choosing among contrary and conflicting precedents is something this Court and practicing attorneys in this state truly enjoy.