Court Opinion

ID: 9739278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:11:37.360959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:11.301555
License: Public Domain

NEUMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I think it will come as a great surprise to the workers’ compensation commissioner that the agency has not only the power to determine the legal effect of a contract — as this court recognized in Sneddon — but to take the next step of reforming contracts based on equitable principles.
Were we writing on a clean slate, the majority’s persuasive opinion might strike me as a great idea. Why not adjudicate all the issues, legal and equitable, in one forum? Courts can do it, why not administrative agencies? The reason, of course, is that our constitution vests the legislature — not this court — with the task of determining the scope of an executive agency’s powers. The majority pays lip service to this principle but then, by its own lights, decides contract reformation is surely an equitable power the legislature meant to confer on the compensation commissioner. It points to a case from Kansas to bolster its view, Employers’ Liability Assurance Corp. v. Matlock, 151 Kan. 293, 98 P.2d 456, 462 (1940). That opinion, however, has been criticized precisely for having failed to consider the constitutional question implicit in assigning equitable powers to an administrative agency based on statutory interpretation. See Provenzano v. Long, 64 Nev. 412, 183 P.2d 639, 644 (1947) (citing Michigan Mut. Liab. Co. v. Baker, 295 Mich. 237, 294 N.W. 168, 170 (1940)). Al*136though we drew on Matlock for our holding in Sneddon, we described the Kansas decision as “more far reaching than ours is here.” Sneddon, 249 Iowa at 398, 86 N.W.2d at 874. Indeed it was, until today.
The Provenzano case explained its rationale for rejecting the Kansas “rule” this way:
No citation of authority is necessary to show that courts of equity have authority in proper cases to modify, reform, or cancel written instruments. On the other hand, the powers of the commission are derived exclusively from the statutes. No statute is cited by appellants, and we have been unable to find any which even pretends to confer authority on the commission to modify, reform, or cancel written instruments properly before it for consideration. Any attempt by the Legislature to confer such purely judicial powers upon the commission would no doubt meet with insurmountable constitutional objections. While the Workmen’s Compensation Act must at all times be liberally construed to the end that its beneficent purposes may be fully carried out, we find no sanction in the law for the contention herein made that the commission may exercise such purely judicial powers.
Provenzano, 183 P.2d at 645 (citations and quoted authority omitted). More recently, the Oklahoma appellate court reached the same conclusion, holding its compensation commissioner “does not possess the power of reformation and cannot exercise that power by the use of interpretation and construction.” D. Daniels Masonry v. Daniels, 999 P.2d 1124, 1126 (Okla.Civ.Ct.App.2000).
The majority rightly notes that other courts have taken a different course. But when the question has arisen in other contexts in Iowa, this court has ruled the compensation commissioner cannot grant equitable relief. See, e.g., Ford v. Barcus, 261 Iowa 616, 622, 155 N.W.2d 507, 511 (1968); Doyle v. Dugan, 229 Iowa 724, 731-32, 295 N.W. 128, 131-32 (1940).
The majority justifies today’s decision as a way of simplifying the resolution of insurance contract disputes “when appropriate and necessary to determine a worker’s entitlement to statutory benefits.” This is a noble goal but I fear it will ultimately complicate, rather than simplify, the process. Here the commissioner, construing the employer’s insurance policy, determined as a matter of law that the policy did not cover Zomer. So, the commissioner concluded, the agency was without jurisdiction to adjudicate Zomer’s claim for benefits. Today’s holding means that the agency will now reconsider the record, examining the facts for proof of mutual mistake, and .then reform the contract (or not) based on equity. When the inevitable petition for judicial review is filed, and then appealed, will this court then review the disputed facts de novo, rather than at law? Assuming the former, this court will be free to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the agency, a situation that arguably will lead — in the long run — to more appeals and resultant delay, not less.
In short, I am convinced the majority has read too much into our Sneddon decision and, more importantly, has given equitable authority to an agency that is the legislator’s prerogative to confer, not ours. The opinion also injects uncertainty into a system that needs more, not less, predictability. I cannot join it.
LARSON, J., joins this dissent.