Court Opinion

ID: 9558508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:10:58.771205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:20.550867
License: Public Domain

Hicks, J.
(dissenting) — On the issue of medical witness fees, I dissent.
It may well be that the time has come when a claimant’s medical witness fees should be paid by the state fund *854administered by the Department of Labor and Industries. At this point in the history of this legislation, however, this court should not make that determination.
The day is past when it is necessary to pretend that courts do not make law. On occasion, there is no other way to solve a problem that must have a solution. This is not such a case.
As the argument was heard in this case and the opinion prepared, the legislature sat in session not 300 yards away. There was no necessity for this court to legislate in this instance.
As pointed out in the majority opinion, Nelson v. Industrial Ins. Dep't, 104 Wash. 204, 176 P. 15 (1918), decided almost 60 years ago, held that the superior court had no discretionary power in fixing medical witness fees. Since that time the legislature has met every 2 years, or oftener, and it has amended the act on many occasions, including the specific section herein concerned. Matters concerning industrial insurance have frequently received the attention of the legislature, yet the Nelson construction has never been changed.
In writing for the Court of Appeals in Winterroth v. Meats, Inc., 10 Wn. App. 7, 13, 516 P.2d 522 (1973), Judge Horowitz considered an identical problem of a different section of the statute. He had this to say:
It must be presumed that the legislature has been aware of the rule announced in 1922 and then reaffirmed in later decisions. It would have been a simple matter for the legislature to have changed the rule and adopted a broader exception so as to permit the action here if the legislature wished such change to be effected. This is all the more true because the legislature during the last 50 years has amended the industrial insurance act in a number of respects but has never changed the critical language contained in RCW 51.24.020. Instead, the language has been retained in four reenactments during the years. The reenactment of the statute without change after the Supreme Court of this state has construed the statute is in effect a legislative approval of the statute as *855construed. McKinney v. McDonald's Estate, 71 Wn.2d 262, 427 P.2d 974 (1967).
That the legislature has, to date, consciously acquiesced in Nelson is evidenced by the fact that on at least one occasion it declined to enact a provision designed to pay an extraordinary medical witness fee. (Senate Bill No. 551, 1967.) After 60 years, I would consider a policy settled and if it is to be changed it is particularly within the province of the legislature to do the changing. For this court to now reconstrue the statute, as it has done, is unwarranted judicial legislation with which I cannot concur. I dissent.
Wright, C.J., and Stafford and Horowitz, JJ., concur with Hicks, J.