Court Opinion

ID: 9854451
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:07:48.815717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:05.261964
License: Public Domain

Justice MEYER
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the rule laid down by the majority today that McGill v. Town of Lumberton, 215 N.C. 752, 3 S.E. 2d 324 (1939), and Harris v. Henry’s Auto Parts, Inc., 57 N.C. App. 90, 290 S.E. 2d 716, disc. rev. denied, 306 N.C. 384, 294 S.E. 2d 208 (1982), have merged two of the three N.C.G.S. § 97-2 elements in a workers’ compensation claim, so that the claimant may meet her burden of proof by relying on a “presumption of compensability” that the event causing decedent’s death was “work-related.” The majority defines “work-related” to mean “from an injury by accident arising out of employment.” In effect, this definition is itself a merger of the “by accident” and “arising out of his employment” elements in N.C.G.S. § 97-2. I do not read these two cases to mean that a workers’ compensation claimant may escape having to prove separately either one or the other, and certainly not both, of these elements. In short, the majority has broadened the effect of the presumptions indulged by the cases beyond any scenario envisioned when they were decided.
In McGill, we expressly limited the scope of the presumption to allow an “inference . . . sufficient to raise a prima facie case as to accident only.” 215 N.C. at 754, 3 S.E. 2d at 326 (emphasis added). In Harris, the Court of Appeals held the presumption applicable to the “arising out of’ element only. By defining “work-related” as a combination of these two separate elements, the majority ignores the intent of N.C.G.S. § 97-2 that each element must be separately proved and allows a workers’ compensation claimant to rely on a presumption to furnish the proof. While previously we indulged a presumption that the death “arose out of’ an accident and an inference sufficient to raise a prima facie case as to “accident” only, the majority has now created a new animal called a “presumption of compensability.”
While the majority fails to disclose it, I note that the unexplained death provisions upon which Larson relies in his treatise to justify the use of a presumption in a claimant’s favor apply *373only when the cause of death is known but the circumstances are not. 1 Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 10.32 (1985). In both McGill and Harris, the medical causation of death was known. Use of a presumption was necessary to prove that the circumstances surrounding each of the deaths met the requirements of the statutory elements defining a compensable injury. In the present case, however, we know nothing of either the cause of death or the circumstances surrounding it. The purpose of the presumption is to ease the claimant’s burden of proof in situations where there is an unexplained death and no reasonable way for the claimant to provide affirmative proof of each element of compensability. That is not the case here, at least with regard to determination of the cause of death, since the claimant could have had an autopsy performed in order to ascertain that the cause of death either was or was not likely to have been accidental.
Finally, the majority’s statement that “[e]mployers may be in a better position than the family of the decedent to offer evidence on the circumstances of the death” is simply not true and is in fact illogical. Reading this statement in context, the Court apparently refers to the medical circumstances of the death. An autopsy is the accepted method of determining the cause of a person’s death. There is, indeed, a statutory limitation on persons who have the right to have an autopsy performed. N.C.G.S. § 130A-398 (1986). This statute lists six categories to which the right to have an autopsy performed is limited. These categories include medical examiners, district attorneys, family members, etc. An employer is within none of these categories. In contrast, the claimant of a decedent’s benefits is authorized to cause an autopsy to be performed, provided he is the spouse, adult child or stepchild, parent, stepparent, adult sibling, guardian, relative, or person who accepts responsibility for the final disposition of the decedent’s body. N.C.G.S. § 130A-398(6) (1986). The claimant, therefore, is the only person who bears the responsibility of having the cause of death medically determined and who concomitantly should bear the burden of offering such evidence.
The majority compounds the error of its reasoning by citing N.C.G.S. § 130A-383 for the proposition that employers may request the assistance of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in determining the medical reason for the employee’s death “in any *374case of death resulting from accident when the deceased had been in apparent good health.” N.C.G.S. § 130A-383 grants the medical examiner jurisdiction over sudden deaths “occurring in a jail, prison, correctional institution or in police custody; or occurring under any suspicious, unusual or unnatural circumstance.” Even in those circumstances, the medical examiner must find an autopsy “advisable and in the public interest.” N.C.G.S. § 130A-389(a) (1986). Where, as here, there is merely a private civil claim for monetary benefits, it is unlikely that an autopsy is required “in the public interest.” Id. This statute is obviously designed to give the medical examiner jurisdiction in situations where a death may have occurred in criminal circumstances. N.C.G.S. § 130A-383(a) (1986). Further, N.C.G.S. § 130A-385, also cited by the majority, specifically states that “[a] copy of the report of the medical examiner investigation may be forwarded to the appropriate district attorney.” N.C.G.S. § 130A-385(d) (1986). In my view, N.C.G.S. §§ 130A-383, et seq., cover only those questionable deaths in which an autopsy is required in the public interest. An employer does not come within the parameters of these statutes in a case such as the one sub judice.
The situation in the case at bar is particularly egregious because the claimant did not introduce the death certificate, which would presumably have shown the medical cause of death or that such cause could not be determined. Nor do we know whether an autopsy was performed and, if so, what it revealed or even whether the claimant requested an autopsy. All the claimant did here was to assert that the death was work-related. This should not entitle the claimant to such a “presumption of compensability.” The majority decision allows the potential of the perpetration of a fraud by withholding evidence.
I dissent.
Justices WEBB and WHICHARD join in this dissenting opinion.