Court Opinion

ID: 9642165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:50:55.531307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:09:23.789448
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent from the holding that the 1974 Amendment to § 303(b) of the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act,1 *383precludes the joinder of T. J. Henry, the employer of the plaintiff. I otherwise join in the majority opinion.
Section 303(b), as amended in 1974, provides:
“In the event injury or death to an employee is caused by a third party, then such employee . . . may bring [an] action at law against such third party, but the employer ... shall not be liable to a third party for damages, contribution or indemnity in any action at law. ...”2
The 1974 Amendment does not state that an employer may not be joined as an additional defendant. Whatever the legislative history may indicate the legislature intended to provide, the language of the enactment itself is clear. While it may be true that the function of this Court is to determine the intent of the legislature when its enactments are challenged, I believe the performance of that function should be restricted to enactments that are unclear as well as challenged.
The inequities effected by precluding the joinder of the employer are several and considerable. Some propose that the employer assume the position of a party plaintiff to present its subrogation claim so that the recovery of the employer as a plaintiff is reduced in proportion to the assessment of the responsibility of the employer for the occurrence. However, sure the rationale for this proposal and however well it may address a clearly inequitable situation, the fundamental issue in a trial of the claim of an injured plaintiff is the question of which parties are responsible and this question has considerably greater clarity when the employer is an additional defendant, whatever may be the restrictions placed upon recovery from that employer.
If a pause in the concern for principle permits consideration of the pragmatic, it is clear that the settlement of litigation is not enhanced by precluding joinder of the employer. Whatever compulsion an injured plaintiff and the parties defendant may feel for settlement, the subrogation *384carrier for the employer feels no such exertion, whatever the skills of the settlement judge.
I share what is, I acknowledge, the minority view and do so for all of the reasons already persuasively expressed by Judge Gwilym A. Price, Jr. in his dissent in Hefferin v. Stempkowski, 247 Pa.Super. 366, 372 A.2d 869 (1977), alloca-tur refused; by Judge Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr. in his concurring and dissenting opinion in Arnold v. Borbonus, 257 Pa.Super. 110, 390 A.2d 271 (1978); and by Lebanon County Common Pleas Court President Judge G. Thomas Gates in Yeagley v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 16 D. & C.3d 681, (C.P.Leb.Co., 1980).

. Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, art. III, § 303 as amended. Act of December 5, 1974, P.L. 782, No. 263, § 6, 77 P.S. § 481(b) (Supp. 1981-82).

. The Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act, supra; 77 P.S. § 481(b).