Court Opinion

ID: 9795665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:35:13.107411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:31:01.124005
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS
dissenting.
I disagree not only with the majority's conclusion in these particular cases, but also with its approach to statutory interpretation. I therefore respectfully dissent.
Rather than apply well-settled principles of statutory interpretation, I believe the majority becomes fixed on a broad declaration of legislative policy and dismisses as unreasonable any reading of specific statutory provisions that does not comport with the majority's own view of how best to implement that policy. I also believe the majority neglects its responsibility to independently construe the statute, instead reacting to the opinions of various court of appeals panels, in other cases, concerned with different issues altogether and lacking precedential value for this court in any event.
Despite the split in court of appeals thinking that led to this appeal, the majority declares section 8-40-201(19)(b), C.R.S. (2006), to be unambiguous, admitting of only one reasonable understanding. Maj. op. at 668-69. In terms of accepted principles of statutory construction, such a conclusion means, of course, that the statute has a "plain meaning," rendering unnecessary any further inquiry into legislative intent. See 2A Norman J. Singer, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 45:02 (6th ed.2000). Rarely will a particular word or sentence be capable of communicating an idea of any sophistication, between a sending and receiving party, without reference to some greater context or purpose. I consider the majority's reading of this statute to be not even the better, much less the only, reasonable understanding of the language chosen by the legislature to communicate its intent.
The majority focuses largely on the court of appeals' opinion in Midboe v. Industrial Claim Appeals Office, 88 P.3d 648 (Colo.App.2008), criticizing its construction of the terms "continuing" and "conversion" as being direct references to Colorado's statutory scheme permitting terminated employees to continue and convert their previous employer's group health insurance plan. Maj. op. at 667. In Midboe, the court addressed the separate question of whether an employee's cost in continuing group health insurance, within the meaning of the statute, was intended to include any contribution by an employee to his group insurance coverage following a finding of his disability, or only the employee's cost in continuing coverage entirely at his own expense, after his employer had stopped contributing. Dismissing the intermediate appellate court's search for legislative intent as completely unnecessary, the majority simply declares the question expressly answered by the statute, which, in its view, admits of no alternative meanings. See maj. op. at 667-68.
In disparaging the suggestion of an intended cross-reference to COBRA, and therefore any legislative intent to require actual continuation and conversion of the employer's group health plan according to the terms of COBRA, however, the majority openly acknowledges that the word "cost" could have more than one meaning. In common parlance, it could refer to either the cost actually incurred by an employee in continuing his health insurance coverage or the price at which continued health insurance coverage is available to the employee, whether or not he chooses to take it. Maj. op. at 668. Although the two meanings are clearly incompatible, the majority considers the statutory language itself broad enough to include both, but in the absence of some additional limitation to the former, the "plain language" of the statute unambiguously means the latter. Id.
On the contrary, had the legislature intended the term "employee's cost" to mean the cost that an employee would incur, if he were to continue his health insurance, it could much more precisely have expressed that intent with a conditional sentence, or by using a subjunctive verb form, or simply by referring to price rather than cost. Accepting, however, that the terms "price" and "cost" are often used interchangeably and that reasonable minds could understand the legislature to have tacitly assumed by "cost," the "price" at which health insurance would be made available to the employee, the effect would be an ambiguity in meaning, to be *671resolved by other aids to interpretation. See generally 2A Singer, supra § 45:05.
Apparently recognizing the tenuousness of its explanation, the majority offers, in the alternative, that even if the legislature's use of the term "cost" were considered ambiguous, nothing in the legislative history of this provision, which admittedly does not address the matter at all, would support Midboe's perceived linkage with COBRA. See maj. op. at 669. Such an approach literally stands the judicial resolution of ambiguous legislative enactments on its head, not only presuming a particular intent from a lack of any specific historical reference to the contrary, but ignoring other important indicators of legislative intent, like context within a larger statutory scheme, the nature and timing of statutory changes relative to existing provisions and external events, and public policy concerns likely motivating specific legislative choices.
' Apart from the chosen language itself, however, the legislature's unique treatment of health insurance benefits points to an actual, rather than contingent, employee expense. In the 1989 amendments at issue here, the general assembly completely eliminated the catch-all provision for "other similar advantages" and allowed in the calculation of an employee's average weekly wage only those advantages or fringe benefits enumerated in the statute. See maj. op. at 664 (citing ch. 67, see. 4, § 8-47-101(2), 1989 Colo. Sess. Laws 409, 411). Along with the reasonable value of room and board, the statute included as an advantage or fringe benefit "the cost of health insurance coverage or the cost of the conversion of such health insurance coverage;" but unlike the amount an employer had been paying for room and board, it mandated that the amount an employer had been contributing to health insurance not to be included in the calculation of average weekly wage. Id. Instead, the legislature substituted for that figure the employee's cost of continuing the employer's group health insurance plan, and upon termination of the continuation, the employee's cost of conversion to a similar or lesser plan. Id. Because employers' health insurance plans may, and typically do, require that a portion of the purchase price, over and above the employer's share, be paid by the employee himself, this formula actually includes an increase in the average weekly wage beyond the benefit previously provided by the employer. Id.
An employer's contribution for health insurance differs from the reasonable value of room and board in that it is paid, and treated as a fringe benefit, only if the employee chooses to invest in his own health insurance by incurring additional costs himself. In the absence of his willingness to incur that expense, the employee may not be entitled to receive any health benefit from the employer. By permitting disabled employees to include their full cost of continuing and converting their health insurance, as if it were a component of the rate at which their services were recompensed under their contract of hire, the legislature has unquestionably provided an incentive for them to continue health insurance coverage for themselves and their dependents. Furthermore, because an employee's disability benefit consists of only a percentage of his average weekly wage (according to the majority, two-thirds in the case of someone situated similarly to Ray, maj. op. at 664), with this formula the legislature has also maintained approximately the same relative obligations of employer and employee in continuing the employee's health insurance coverage. Even without an express declaration of intent, the rationale for this formula is apparent.
Furthermore, by eraphatically rejecting the court of appeals' pre-1989 treatment of health insurance as "any other similar advantage[ ]," the "reasonable value" of which was to be added to the employee's average weekly wage as a fringe benefit, and instead specifically defining the "benefit" as the "employee's cost of continuing the employer's group health insurance plan," the general assembly demonstrates a clear intention to eliminate judicial discretion in the matter and make the benefit a determinable amount. § 8-40-201(19). The legislature could therefore have meant "price" by referring to "cost" only if the price of continuing and converting the employer's group health insurance program were a determinable amount. Because section 8-40-201(19)(b) *672permits continuation and conversion to a "similar or lesser insurance" plan, as the majority notes, see maj. op. at 669, the cost to the employee of continuing or converting health insurance cannot be precisely known unless, and until, the employee actually purchases a particular plan.
Understanding the statute, as the majority does, to treat the cost of continuing health insurance as a fringe benefit, even though the employee chooses not to use the increase in his disability benefit for that purpose, deprives this carefully worked-out formula of any significance; gives employees who had accepted coverage before being injured a meaningless windfall over those who had not; and emasculates the public policy interest in providing an incentive for injured workers to continue their health coverage. While the potential hardships of transactional delay are realities of virtually any legal proceeding, the majority cannot suggest that delay is increased by requiring actual continuation of health coverage, or that increasing benefits for the employee despite his failure to continue health coverage better serves the employee's health care needs. It merely points to the fact that for some employees, even this option may not provide a meaningful incentive.
To my mind, the majority's interpretation does little more than increase the disability checks of certain injured employees, by an amount that is unrelated to the money rate at which their services were recompensed before their disability, while ignoring appropriate considerations of continuity, symmetry, and public policy in the determination of legislative intent. I therefore respectfully dissent.