Court Opinion

ID: 9700351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:23:12.56216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:07.829123
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. In my view, this case is governed by Turner v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp., 479 Pa. 618, 389 A.2d 42 (1978), which holds that a claimant who is eligible for compensation either on the basis of total disability or specific losses may elect compensation under the provision more beneficial to him, provided that what he has already received must be treated as a setoff against what he is entitled to receive under the alternate benefit.
In other words, Turner simply held that section 306(d) “requires that payment for specific losses not begin until the payment for temporary total disability has ended.” 479 Pa. at 625, 389 A.2d at 45, based on the assumption that if a permanently disabled person were to be permitted to elect specific loss benefits in lieu of permanent disability, the award of specific loss benefits would be retroactive to the date of the accident and that all sums already paid would be deducted from the modified award. Turner allows an injured worker to maximize his benefits under the act by electing between types of awards which would be most beneficial to him, subject to a set off for all benefits already paid.
Using the same approach here, facilitating Rideski’s maximum recovery under the act, it would be proper under sections 306(d) and 306(g) to allow Rideski’s widow to elect specific loss benefits on her deceased husband’s behalf. However, she should be able to make that claim only as he would have made it, retroactively to the date benefits were first payable and subject to a setoff for all sums already paid. Rideski was entitled to 430 weeks of specific loss benefits (410 weeks for the loss of an arm plus 20 weeks healing = 430 weeks = 8 years, 3 months). Rideski died on July 18, 1987, 8 years, 5 months after the accident. Because Rideski received disability payments for this entire period of time in the same amount as his specific loss benefits which must be set off *169against any specific loss benefits to which he was entitled, and since any specific loss benefits expired two months before Rideski died, his widow was entitled to no specific loss benefits, and Commonwealth Court was correct in its result, albeit in error in its interpretation of Turner.
Thus, I would affirm Commonwealth Court.
ZAPPALA, J., joins this dissenting opinion.