Court Opinion

ID: 9771560
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:47:14.172571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:32.950075
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, concurring. I concur with that part of the majority opinion which holds that there is no authority for “current total disability.” However, I believe the language of the majority opinion is overly broad. The majority has stated this principle in a manner which might be misinterpreted and could result in a determination that once a healing period has ended, no additional temporary compensation may be paid regardless of the consequences and nature of the compensable injury. It is my fear that this decision might be interpreted to hold that injured workers are barred from receiving successive or interrupted periods of temporary total or partial disability. The majority states: “[t]o the extent that McNeely has been interpreted as holding that temporary benefits, regardless of how they are denominated, may be paid after the end of the healing period, that interpretation is erroneous.” This part of the opinion is subject to the interpretation that after a temporary healing period has been interrupted, it can never be resumed. It is not necessary to extinguish currently existing rights in order to resolve the issue of “current total disability.” Failure to allow a temporary total disability period to be interrupted by an attempt at part or full time work would destroy the incentive for an injured worker to temporarily re-enter the labor field. The Workers’ Compensation Act is social legislation and should be interpreted liberally in favor of the worker. In fact, since the beginning of the Act, an interruption of a period of temporary total disability, by obtaining a less strenuous job, has been held to create separate periods of disability. In the case of Monticello Cotton Mills Company v. Larkin, 213 Ark. 713, 212 S.W.2d 346 (1948), this Court dealt with this same problem. In Larkin the Court stated: Larkin’s award was for $10.40 per week for disability resulting from injuries received June 18, 1942, — began June 23, 1942, and continued until July 27 of the same year. Larkin then resumed work, continuing the employment until March 6, 1943, when the same disabling cause compelled relinquishment of the position. September 15, 1943, the Commission directed a resumption of payment, and under this order the obligation for 110 5/7 weeks was discharged — that is, to March 16, 1945. Larkin then obtained employment at the Camden Naval Ordnance Plant, being so engaged November 16,1946, at which time unemployment occurred, and a claim for resumption of payments was asserted. On the ninth of April, 1947, the Commission found that appellee still suffered permanent, partial disability entitling him to compensation of $7.00 per week during continuance of the impairment, subject to controlling provisions of Act 319. . . . I am aware that the Act that existed at the time Monticello was decided is not exactly the same as the present Act. I also realize that Arkansas was the forty-seventh state to enact Workers’ Compensation laws. However, simply because we were late in adopting such legislation is no reason to continue to be behind the rest of the country. Since the inception of the Act, both this Court and the Court of Appeals have upheld the principle of “time out” during temporary work re-entries. In Larkin the Court stated: To hold that the weekly period must be reduced to correspond with “time out” during voluntary employment would be to say, in effect, that the injury is not to be fully compensated and that essence of the Act is time. We do not think this was the legislative intent, hence the judgments must be affirmed. The terms “temporary total” and “temporary partial disability” are not synonymous with “healing period.” In Arkansas State Highway Department v. Breshears, 272 Ark. 244, 613 S.W.2d 392 (1981), this Court stated: Temporary total disability is that period within the healing period in which the employee suffers a total incapacity to earn wages. . . [Temporary partial disability is that period within the healing period in which the employee suffers only a decrease in his capacity to earn. . . . The plain words set forth in Ark. Stat. Ann. § 81-1302 (Repl. 1976) define “disability” as meaning an incapacity to earn because of injury. The statute further states that “healing period” means that period for healing of the injury resulting from the accident. It is clear that the Act contemplates different periods of “disability” during the “healing period.” Frequently an employee will be conditionally released from a “disability” in order to attempt to return to gainful employment. This was the case in Breshears. Sometimes an injured employee may be declared by the attending physician to have reached a plateau in his healing period where a release for “light duty” employment would be appropriate and beneficial in order to facilitate re-entry into the work force. Both the employer and the employee would suffer monetary hardships by the failure to encourage such “time outs.” “A claimant’s voluntary efforts to find employment, in spite of physical disability, should not be used to penalize him by preventing him from later receiving compensation which he would otherwise have been entitled to receive. The “healing period” is not always readily determinable. In the exercise of a physician’s sound judgment, there may be a time when he decides it would be in the best interests of all parties to release a patient for a trial period of employment, even though the patient has not reached the end of the healing period. Often this “temporary” work retards or even aggravates the recovery process. In other cases, the employee will be able to resume light duty, or even his regular duties, long before the end of the healing period. Therefore, the “temporary” disability may end before the healing process is completed. Successive or reoccurring periods of disability do not necessarily increase the liabilities of the employer or his carrier. The Act limits the maximum payment by time and amount. If an employee were to draw 450 weeks of temporary compensation, then the employer, or its carrier, would not be liable for any additional disability compensation because the Death and Permanent Total Disability Bank Fund would be responsible for the additional payments. A hard and fast rule that temporary benefits cannot be paid after the end of the healing process might well result in an injustice. For example, a broken mandible might result in a temporary disability period of one week but the healing period would last many weeks. Another example might be that the loss of a foot would require a relatively short time to heal but would require a much longer period of temporary disability to enable the worker to learn to walk with an artificial foot. Failure to recognize such possibilities will most likely result in the Commission and the courts being compelled to find an “aggravation” or a “reinjury” when in reality it is the resumption of temporary disability after a trial work period. I would make it clear that a claimant’s successful efforts to find employment during the healing period should not be used to penalize him by preventing him from later receiving compensation which he would otherwise have been entitled to receive.