Court Opinion

ID: 9760621
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:05:37.200006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:14.965721
License: Public Domain

Justice GOLDBERG,
dissenting.
Because I am of the opinion that suitable alternative employment means employment that is neither make-work nor temporary and that is designed to preserve the employment relationship and the dignity of the injured worker, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion in this case. I decline to show the gate to this worker, who did all that the law required of her, simply because she failed fully to recover from her work-related injury.
The term “suitable alternative employment,” as set forth in the Workers’ Compensation Act, is defined as “employment or an actual offer of employment which the employee is physically able to perform and will not exacerbate the employee’s health condition and which bears a reasonable relationship to the employee’s qualifications, background, education, and training.” G.L.1956 § 28-29-2(10). An employee is eligible for suitable alternative employment when he or she has sustained an injury that entitles the employee to benefits pursuant to G.L.1956 § 28-33-18 (partial incapacity benefits) or G.L.1956 § 28-34-3 (benefits for an occupational disease) and the employee physically is capable of performing the work without risk to his or her health. Section 28-33-18.2(a). Significantly, the benefits calculation for an employee performing suitable alternative employment markedly differs from weekly benefits for partial incapacity and, in my opinion, has no relevance to partial incapacity benefits.
For partial incapacity, “the employer shall pay the injured employee a weekly compensation equal to seventy-five percent (75%) of the difference between his or her spendable average weekly base wages, earnings, or salary before the injury as computed pursuant to the provisions of § 28-38-20, and his or her spendable weekly wages, earnings, salary, or earnings capacity after [the injury] * * *.” Section 28-33-18(a). Compensation benefits for an employee working in a suitable alternative employment position are different and are controlled by a separate section in the Workers’ Compensation Act: “The employer or insurer shall pay an injured employee that accepts suitable alternative employment a weekly compensation equal to sixty-six and two-thirds percent (66 %%) of the difference between the employee’s average weekly wage, earnings or salary before the injury [pre-injury wages] and his or her weekly wages, earnings or salary from the suitable alternative employment.” Section 28-33-18.2(a). No*444tably, there are situations in which the earnings for suitable alternative employment are equal to or in excess of the employee’s pre-injury wages, and in those cases the employer’s insurance carrier pays no compensation benefits. The holding in this case renders such an employee, who is not receiving any weekly benefits, subject to the 312-week gate. In my opinion, this is an absurd result that does nothing to further the salutary purpose of the state’s workers’ compensation scheme.
In my view, after an employee undertakes a position of suitable alternative employment, he or she is not subject to the provisions of § 28-33-18 because the employee, contrary to the conclusion of the majority, is no longer receiving weekly compensation for partial incapacity. Rather, the employee has accepted an offer of suitable alternative employment, a job that is appropriate to the worker and acceptable to the employer. The employment relationship and the compensation scheme that gave rise to that relationship is governed by the provisions of § 28-33-18.2, which has no provision that even remotely suggests that this employment will expire after 312 weeks. Indeed, the provision creating suitable alternative employment, § 28-33-18.2, is silent with respect to the 312-week gate for partial incapacity benefits, § 28 — 33—18(d), and makes no reference, whatsoever, to the cessation of benefits based on the passage of time.
A careful review of the statutory scheme and the interplay between benefits for partial incapacity and suitable alternative employment is instructive. Notably, § 28-33 — 18(b), the subsection that addresses maximum medical improvement for an employee receiving partial benefits and that requires a reduction in those benefits when an employee has reached maximum medical improvement, specifically is made subject to the provisions of § 28-33-18.2— suitable alternative employment. That is not the case for § 28 — 33—18(d), the 312-week gate. In my opinion, the fact that suitable alternative employment is referred to in § 28-33-18(b) as it relates to maximum medical improvement, and not in the subsection under review in this case, § 28-33-18(d), is determinative of the issues before this Court. The fact that the provision on suitable alternative employment is included in subsection (b) of § 28-33-18 and omitted in subsection (d) of the same statute is, in my view, intentional and purposeful and demonstrates a legislative intent that the 312-week gate does not apply to a worker in a suitable alternative employment position. See Orthopedic Specialists, Inc. v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 120 R.I. 378, 382, 388 A.2d 352, 354 (1978) (noting that when a statute such as the Workers’ Compensation Act creates rights that were unknown at common law, the express statutory language that prescribes the rights and the beneficiaries of those rights is exclusive). This Court long has recognized that although the provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act are to be construed liberally to effectuate its remedial purpose, we may not engage in statutory interpretation that would distort the plain meaning of those provisions. Id. It is not the business of this Court to read subsections of one statute into another in the absence of a clear legislative intent to the contrary. Accordingly, I am of the opinion that, if the General Assembly intended to incorporate the 312-week gate into the provisions of suitable alternative employment, it would have done so within the confines of § 28-33-18(d) in the same manner as in § 28-33-18(b).
Additionally, in my opinion, partial incapacity benefits are not the statutory or functional equivalent of suitable alternative employment, and the 312-week gate does not, as the Appellate Division and the majority have declared, swing both ways. It *445is undisputed that this worker had been receiving weekly compensation for partial incapacity based on § 28-33-18 until she returned to work in a suitable alternative employment position. The Workers’ Compensation Court entered a decree whereby the parties agreed that Ms. Mumma’s return to work “was to be considered a job offer of suitable alternative employment within the meaning of the Workers’ Compensation Act.” Thereafter, the parties stipulated that Ms. Mumma “fully and faithfully perform[ed] all job duties pursuant to the requirement of the suitable alternative employment position.” In my view, once she accepted the offer of suitable alternative employment and returned to work, Ms. Mumma was not, as the majority concludes, “receiving weekly workers’ compensation benefits for her partial incapacity.” She was employed. I am of the belief that these terms are separate and distinct and do not overlap as applied in this case.
Moreover, the gate, as set forth in § 28-33 — 18(d), provides in relevant part that, “[i]n the event that compensation for partial disability is paid under this section for a period of three hundred and twelve (312) weeks, the employee’s right to continuing weekly compensation benefits shall be determined pursuant to the terms of § 28-33-18.3.” (Emphasis added.) At the time Ms. Mumma was deprived of her seniority, medical benefits, and vacation benefits, she was not receiving “compensation for partial disability * * * under [§ 28-33-18]”; she had a job, which she was fully and faithfully performing in accordance with the salutary purpose of the workers’ compensation scheme. Accordingly, I am of the opinion that because she was not receiving weekly benefits for partial disability, she was not subject to the gate.
Furthermore, the trial judge and the Appellate Division overlooked and misconceived what actually transpired in this case and engaged in statutory gyrations in order to achieve their result. First, after 312 weeks, Ms. Mumma was informed that her job status changed and that she was reduced from full-time-employee status to part-time employment. According to the Appellate Division, this notification advised Ms. Mumma that “because she continued to be unable to work a full-time, forty (40) hour a week schedule, she was being reclassified as a part-time employee effective October 22, 2005.” The Appellate Division noted that before this reclassification, “the employer had continued to provide the employee with the same level of employment benefits for which she was eligible as a full-time employee prior to her work-related injury.” This, of course, is mandated by law: “Any employee who accepts suitable alternative employment with his or her employer of record shall continue to maintain the seniority status and all rights incidental to it that the employee enjoyed prior to his or her injury, except that these rights shall not exceed the current rights of a similar employee with equal seniority.” Section 28-33-18.2(d). The Appellate Division ignored this provision and approved the reasoning of the trial judge that “because the employee was no longer entitled to receive weekly benefits for partial incapacity pursuant to * * * § 28-33-18, she was no longer eligible for suitable alternative employment!,]” and, based on this remarkable finding, Ms. Mumma “could not compel the employer to continue to provide the same employment benefits she enjoyed when she was in the suitable alternative employment position.”
The Appellate Division found that because Ms. Mumma could have been terminated (which did not occur), there was “no reason why Ms. Mumma should be placed in any better position” than an employee who was terminated before the expiration of 312 weeks. The Appellate Division *446found that “Cumberland Farms has effectively terminated the suitable alternative employment position, although it has not actually terminated Ms. Mumma’s employment.”
There is no provision in the Workers’ Compensation Act that permits an employee to be “effectively terminated.” I deem this conclusion to be erroneous as a matter of law. According to the Appellate Division, because “[t]he original job offer was significantly altered and [was] no longer the position that was deemed to be suitable alternative employment,” the employer was no longer required to maintain “the incidental benefits of employment enjoyed prior to the work injury.” Thus, Ms. Mumma, by the unilateral stroke of a pen, was placed “in the same position as any other employee who has had their suitable alternative employment position terminated by the employer.”
In this case, both the trial judge and the Appellate Division improperly combined and incorporated specific parts of separate statutes to reach the result in this case. I am of the opinion that this decision is lacking in statutory support, is unjust, and is contrary to our settled principles respecting statutory construction. Consequently, I dissent and would quash the decree in this case.