Court Opinion

ID: 9771495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:45:19.827436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:32.105471
License: Public Domain

*174CADENA, Justice
(concurring).
Our statute follows the format of workmen’s compensation legislation in this country by basing compensation payable to a partially incapacitated employee on the difference between actual earnings before the injury and post-injury earning capacity. It is immediately apparent that the two items to be compared are not the same. The pre-injury earnings factor is a relatively concrete quantity which, in the usual case, can be determined by reference to historical data. On the other hand, “earning capacity” is a more nebulous concept. The fact that it is different from wages earned is made manifest by the fact that the Legislature deliberately used different terminology to describe the pre-injury and post-injury factors to be considered in determining the compensation payable.
According to our statute, the amount which is recoverable by an employee who has suffered a general injury resulting in partial incapacity is an amount equal to 66⅜%” of the difference between his average weekly wages before the injury and his average weekly wage earning capacity during the existence of such partial incapacity . .” [Emphasis added.] Tex.Rev. Civ.Stat.Ann., art. 8306, § 11.
Clearly, under the statute, a partially incapacitated claimant is entitled to compensation if, and only if, as a result of his partial incapacity, his earning capacity is reduced to such an extent that he cannot earn as much as he earned prior to the injury. Simply stated, not all depreciation of earning capacity is compensable. If the claimant’s actual earnings before the injury do not exceed his post-injury earning capacity, he is not entitled to compensation.
The definition of “partial incapacity” embodied in the trial court’s charge in this case precluded a finding of partial incapacity in the absence of a diminution in the claimant’s earning capacity. Therefore, the finding of partial incapacity necessarily included a finding of reduced earning capacity. But, if we accept the plain meaning of the statutory language, a finding of reduced earning capacity is not enough to entitle the claimant to judgment. It does not, standing alone, establish that claimant has suffered a compensable reduction in earning capacity. In order to determine whether the reduction in capacity is com-pensable, it must be determined whether the claimant, because of his partial disability, has lost the capacity to earn as much as he was earning prior to the incapacitating injury. It is, therefore, necessary to submit an additional issue for the purpose of determining the claimant’s post-injury earning capacity. In this case, in order to elicit all information required for the purpose of determining whether claimant was entitled to recover and, if so, the amount of such recovery, an issue was submitted requiring the jury to find plaintiff’s earning capacity during the period of disability.
If the jury finds that claimant’s post-injury earning capacity equals or exceeds the amount he earned prior to the injury, then, according to the statutory formula, he is entitled to no compensation. There is no necessity to discuss the question of conflicting findings. While, given an affirmative answer to the “partial incapacity” issue, claimant has established that he has suffered a reduction in earning power, he has failed to establish that he has suffered a reduction in earning capacity which is com-pensable under the statute.
The conclusion that the findings in this case relating to partial incapacity and earning capacity conflict to an extent which prevents the entry of any judgment and requires the declaration of a mistrial, therefore, does not rest on the language of the statute as written, but on the judicial rewriting of the statute by a bare majority of the Supreme Court fifteen years ago in Employers Reinsurance Corporation v. Holland, 162 Tex. 394, 347 S.W.2d 605 (1961). In that case, five members of our highest tribunal clearly embraced the theory that the purpose of workmen’s compensation legislation is to compensate injured employees for any difference in earning capacities before and after the injury. The fact that the pre-injury factor was described in terms of actual earnings rather than earning ca*175pacity presented an obvious obstacle to the adoption of this theory. That is, it was necessary to translate “average weekly wages before the injury” into “average weekly wage earning capacity before the injury.” This was accomplished by announcing that the Legislature had created an irrebuttable presumption to the effect that “average weekly wages before injury” is synonymous, as a matter of law, with “earning capacity before injury.” 347 S.W.2d at 606. What the Holland majority viewed as the impossible task of subtracting post-injury apples from pre-injury oranges was resolved by simply decreeing that pre-injury oranges were, in fact, the same as pre-injury apples. The possibility of avoiding the difficulty by simply recognizing that apples and oranges are both apples and oranges representative of an amount of money was apparently overlooked. The statute does not require that oranges be subtracted from apples. It requires that dollars and cents be subtracted from dollars and cents.
In the ordinary case, the result of subtracting from the dollar amount representing “weekly wages before injury” from the dollar amount representing “weekly wage earning capacity” after the injury will be exactly the same as that reached by subtracting from the dollar amount representing weekly wage “earning capacity before injury” (conclusively presumed to be the same as “weekly wages before the injury”) the dollar amount representing “weekly wage earning capacity” after the injury. But where, as is the ease here and was the case in Holland, the minuend and the subtrahend are equal, the difference in results is startling. Whether we accept the plain meaning expressed by the unambiguous language of the statute, or accept the judicial gloss imposed on such language by the Holland majority, the difference is “zero.” But, if we apply the statute as written, the result is a judgment denying compensation, while if we apply the statute as rewritten by the Holland majority, the unavoidable result is the declaration of a mistrial. Where the situation presents the opportunity to choose between a rule which results in a judgment and a rule which results in an unproductive expenditure of time and money, it makes little, if any, sense to opt for the rule which, in effect, declares, “It ain’t nothing. Do it again.”
It would, of course, be presumptuous for an intermediate appellate judge to suggest that the Supreme Court reconsider its holding, since that is a privilege which, apparently is reserved to authors of legal treatises and writers of leading articles, comments, and case notes in law reviews. As long as Holland stands, the finding of a conflict in this case of such a nature as to require a retrial is unavoidable. But, perhaps, it would not be at variance with traditional standards of judicial conduct to suggest that the manner of submitting the issues relating to partial incapacity which was used in this case should be avoided, thus eliminating the possibility of conflicting findings. This can be easily accomplished by submitting the issue relating to reduction in earning capacity in the form suggested by the Committee on Pattern Jury Charges. PJC 22.11 (Vol. 2,1970). As long as “partial incapacity” continues to be defined in terms of reduction of earning capacity, the finding of partial incapacity constitutes a finding of reduced earning capacity, and the sole remaining issue to be determined is the question of the amount of such reduction. If the “earning capacity” issue had been submitted in this case in the form suggested in PJC 22.11, the answer to that issue would have been “$0.00,” eliminating the finding of a conflict under Holland. Use of this form of submission, of course, would require, in cases where the parties have entered into a stipulation relating to claimant’s “average weekly wages before injury,” that the jury be told of such stipulation.