Court Opinion

ID: 9738224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:45:38.856972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:04.594201
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HARRISON, dissenting: The General Assembly has mandated that the circuit court is the proper body to protect an employer’s right of reimbursement under section 5(b) of the Workers’ Compensation Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1985, ch. 48, par. 138.5(b)). The law does not envisage any role for the Industrial Commission in the protection of such rights. Freer v. Hysan Corp., 108 Ill. 2d 421, 426 (1985). It is a matter for the courts alone. Accordingly, the circuit and appellate courts were correct in holding that the Industrial Commission has no authority to reduce Travelers’ liability under section 5(b). The distinction my colleagues attempt to draw between section 5(b) liens and section 5(b) credits is spurious. Nothing in the text of the law, the practice of the Industrial Commission or the precedent of this court supports the majority’s analysis. Section 5(b) provides employers and their insurance companies with only one avenue for obtaining reimbursement for the compensation they have paid, and that is through the courts. An employer can assert a lien when a third-party action has been brought by or on behalf of the employee, or, if no such action is brought, the employer can bring his own third-party action and deduct from the proceeds an amount equal to what he has paid in compensation. There are no other alternatives under the law. If Travelers wanted to protect its rights under section 5(b), it should not have withdrawn as intervener in the third-party wrongful-death action filed by the administrator of the decedent’s estate. The assertion of worker’s compensation liens is not compulsory. Such liens can be and often are waived. By withdrawing as intervenor and forsaking any other judicial enforcement of its lien, Travelers effectuated such a waiver. No equities command us to relieve the company from the consequences of its decision. To the contrary, Travelers’ conduct in these proceedings has been singularly obstructionist, unreasonable and vexatious. Travelers’ liability was fixed by the Industrial Commission, confirmed by the circuit court and upheld by the appellate court in Scott I. Having withdrawn from the third-party wrongful-death action, the company had no lawful basis for unilaterally withholding any of the payments it was ordered to make. Its attempt to reinvoke the jurisdiction of the Industrial Commission is merely another ploy to avoid its obligations and should not be permitted. The majority’s disposition must fail for another reason as well. By authorizing the Industrial Commission to grant post-judgment credits, my colleagues’ decision today permits an administrative agency of the executive branch of government to relieve a party from the obligations imposed upon it by valid judgments of the circuit and appellate courts. In effect, the administrative agency is granted the authority to modify the court’s judgment. This is an improper intrusion on the court’s constitutionally based judicial authority and violates the separation of powers doctrine. JUSTICES HEIPLE and NICKELS join in this dissent.