Court Opinion

ID: 9620656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:45:26.74123+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:52.560984
License: Public Domain

ROACH, Justice,
dissenting.
The Administrative Law Judge, the Workers’ Compensation Board, and the Court of Appeals correctly construed KRS 342.315 as imposing no requirement that medical evaluations described in the statute be performed by university employees. Therefore, I would affirm.
I would first note that the physician in question, Dr. Martyn Goldman, was not just a random person chosen to evaluate Appellant. As . the Administrative Law Judge noted in his Opinion and Award:
[I] ordered a university evaluation pursuant to [KRS 342.315] as there was a medical question in regards to the plaintiffs shoulder condition. The Office of Workers’ Claim made the referral to the University of Louisville who scheduled the evaluation with Dr. Goldman. There is nothing in the statute which prevents the university medical schools from contracting with duly qualified physicians ....
Though the ALJ’s characterization of the relationship between Dr. Goldman and the University of Louisville is not explicit, it clearly states that the university had chosen Dr. Goldman as its agent in performing the evaluation and strongly implies that Dr. Goldman did so as a subcontractor. The ALJ also arrived at what I think is the correct construction of KRS 342.315.
KRS 342.315 provides, in relevant part, as follows:
(1) The commissioner shall contract with the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville medical schools to evaluate workers who have had injuries or become affected by occupational diseases covered by this chapter. Referral for evaluation may be made to one (1) of the medical schools whenever a medical question is at issue.
(2) The physicians and institutions performing evaluations pursuant to this section shall render reports encompassing their findings and opinions in the form prescribed by the commissioner. Except as otherwise provided in KRS 342.316, the clinical findings and opinions of the designated evaluator shall be afforded presumptive weight by administrative law judges and the burden to overcome such findings and opinions shall fall on the opponent of that evidence. When administrative law judges reject the clinical findings and opinions of the designated evaluator, they shall specifically state in the order the reasons for rejecting that evidence.
In construing statutes, we have consistently employed the following rules of statutory construction:
The best way in most cases to ascertain such intent or to determine the meaning *536of a statute is to look to the language used, but no intention must be read into the statute not justified by the language. The primary rule is to ascertain the intention from the words employed in enacting the statute and not to guess what the Legislature may have intended but did not express. Resort must be had first to the words, which are decisive if they are clear. The words of the statute are to be given their usual, ordinary, and everyday meaning.
Gateway Const. Co. v. Wallbaum, 356 S.W.2d 247, 249 (Ky.1962) (citations omitted).
In light of these principles, the statute is clear — it does not require the physicians to be university employees or, in the words of the majority opinion, “affiliated with” the medical schools. These requirements simply are not present in the statute. Rather, the statute simply requires the commissioner to contract with the university medical schools to evaluate workers and that the “physicians and institutions performing evaluations” render reports on a prescribed form. KRS 342.315(2) contains no requirement that the physicians who perform the evaluations be university employees or otherwise “affiliated with” the university. Absent such a requirement, nothing in the statute prevents the universities from selecting physicians who are not university employees to perform the evaluations.
Moreover, the statute’s use of the language “[t]he physicians and institutions” clearly contemplates two separate sets of entities who can perform the evaluations. But by requiring that the universities themselves, or at least their direct employees, perform the evaluations, the majority opinion renders the words “physicians and” superfluous. However, “[i]t is a cardinal principle of statutory construction that a statute ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.” Brooks v. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Housing Authority, 132 S.W.3d 790, 811 n. 4 (Ky.2004) (quoting TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31, 122 S.Ct. 441, 449, 151 L.Ed.2d 339 (2001)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The General Assembly could easily have specified that evaluators must be university employees or “affiliated with” the institutions, but it did not. Moreover, nothing in the language of the statute implies such intent. It is not this Court’s role to speculate what the legislature may have intended but failed to express. Commomvealth v. Allen, 980 S.W.2d 278, 280 (Ky.1998). Yet, that is precisely what the majority has done. I respectfully dissent.
JOHNSTONE, J., joins this dissenting opinion.