Court Opinion

ID: 9716470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:40:52.503653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:01.892512
License: Public Domain

Duncan, J.,
dissenting in part: I concur in the view that the employee’s right to compensation payments which accrued before his death survived him and became an asset of his estate (RSA 556:15); and that the motion of the administratrix to appear as party plaintiff was properly granted.
In other respects however, the opinion adopted by a majority of the court appears to me by its interpretation of the language of a single section of the compensation statute (RSA 281:30), to produce a result which could not reasonably have been intended by the Legislature. Throughout its entire history our compensation statute has afforded compensation, not for injury suffered, but for loss of earning capacity due to accidental injury. Desrosiers v. *342Company, 98 N. H. 424, 426. Its purpose has been to furnish such compensation for an arbitrary period, which was three hundred weeks at all times material to this case. Laws 1951, c. 74, s. 3. The conclusion that in a case where the employee was not immediately disabled by his injury, the Legislature intended that a considerable portion of that three hundred weeks could expire before any loss of earning capacity should occur, seems to me to give undue weight to the letter of the. law in disregard of its spirit. See Opinion of the Justices, 66 N. H. 629, 657. The date of the “injury” is important in this case only because of the language of sections 20 and 30 of the statute. RSA ch. 281. Other language, in sections 23, 24 and 25, which confirms the purpose to provide compensation “during . . . disability” is given no consideration in the maj ority opinion.
I would uphold the view of the Trial Court that the period of three hundred weeks commenced on the date when total disability began, and its implied ruling that the limitation on the giving of notice imposed by sections 16 and 17 was intended to run from the time when the claimant could first be reasonably charged with knowledge that his disability was compensable and arose out of his employment. Bolduc v. Company, 97 N. H. 360. Under this view, the Trial Court could properly find that the decedent’s claim was seasonably presented under the 1951 amendment (Laws 1951, c. 77, s. 1; see Keenan v. District, 152 Neb. 54) and that he was entitled to compensation for three hundred weeks from the time when total disability commenced in 1952, rather than from October 1949, when he was not so disabled. Under the interpretation adopted by this court had the employee lived he would have been deprived of more than half of the three hundred weeks’ compensation which in my judgment the Legislature intended to provide. A statute which deprives an employee of his common-law rights is thus construed in such a way as to reduce the substituted right to compensation to one which may be partially or wholly lost before the employee is in a position to learn of its existence. The infirmities inherent in such a construction (see 2 Larson’s Workmen’s Compensation Law, s. 78.42e), appear to me to further counsel adoption of the view which supports the rulings of the court below.