Court Opinion

ID: 9535845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:45:26.91689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:21.812769
License: Public Domain

Krivosha, C.J.,
concurring, in part, and, in part, dissenting.
I concur generally with the majority in this case. I dissent, however, from that portion of the majority opinion which found that the attorney fee taxed as costs against the employer on rehearing should not have been allowed because the employer obtained a reduction in the amount of allowable hospital and medical expenses from $6,616.32 to $6,587.56. Neb. *588Rev. Stat. § 48-125 (Reissue 1978) provides, as noted by the majority, as follows: “In the event the employer files an application for a rehearing before the compensation court en banc from an award of a judge of the compensation court and fails to obtain any reduction in the amount of such award, the compensation court sitting en banc may allow the employee a reasonable attorney’s fee to be taxed as costs against the employer for such rehearing,...” It would be my view, in light of the purposes of the workmen’s compensation act, that unless the evidence discloses that the employer obtains a reduction by reason of something more than a mathematical error, an attorney fee may properly be allowed. The evidence in this case discloses that the reduction obtained was simply the result of correcting certain mathematical errors which were allowed by the single judge. The reduction did not come about by reason of any new findings of fact or errors of law. I believe that where the reduction is simply the correcting of a mathematical error, the Workmen’s Compensation Court is authorized to allow an attorney fee, as it did in this case, and we are in error in now disallowing it.