Court Opinion

ID: 9855051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:18:38.739553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:39.268722
License: Public Domain

EAGLES, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. This case returns to this Court on remand from our Supreme Court for the limited purpose of reconsideration in light of Johnson v. First Union Corp., 131 N.C. App. 142, 504 S.E.2d 808 (1998) (subsequent history omitted).
Here, plaintiff, seeking damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress, filed suit against two vocational rehabilitation specialists. Plaintiff alleged that “defendants were both personally negligent and professionally negligent in their pursuit of plaintiff’s vocational rehabilitation.” Riley v. Debaer, 144 N.C. App. 357, 359, 547 S.E.2d 831, 833 (2001). Unlike the cases relied upon by the majority, Johnson and Deem, plaintiff here did not file any action against her employer or co-employee.
This case presents an issue of first impression: Whether plaintiff’s sole remedy lies within the Workers’ Compensation Act and whether the trial court had subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate plaintiff’s negligence claim against a non-employer and non-coworker defendant. The Court of Appeals of Indiana addressed the same issue in Campbell v. Eckman/Freeman & Assoc., 670 N.E.2d 925 (Ind. App. 1996), as did the Supreme Court of Oregon in Nicholson v. Blachly, 753 P.2d 955 (Or. 1988). In both of those cases, the learned courts held *528that a plaintiff-employee could maintain an action in tort against a third-party vocational rehabilitation organization that had contracted with plaintiff’s employer to provide assistance under each State’s respective workers’ compensation act. The Indiana and Oregon workers’ compensation acts are substantially similar to our Act. See Ind. Code §§ 22-3-1 to -12 (2002); Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 656.001-.990 (2001). The rationale supporting the decisions by the Indiana Court of Appeals in Campbell and the Oregon Supreme Court in Nicholson is applicable here and should be adopted by our courts.
The North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act presumes that all employers and employees fall under the jurisdiction of the Act:
[E]very employer and employee . . . shall be presumed to have accepted the provisions of this Article respectively to pay and accept compensation for personal injury or death by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment and shall be bound thereby.
N.C.G.S. § 97-3 (1999) (emphasis added). Cf Ind. Code § 22-3-2-2 (2002); Or. Rev. Stat. § 656.017 (2001).
In Rorie v. Holly Farms Poultry Co., our Supreme Court summarized the purpose of the Workers’ Compensation Act:
The purpose of the Workers’ Compensation Act is twofold. It was enacted to provide swift and sure compensation to injured workers without the necessity of protracted litigation. This Court has long held that the Act should be liberally construed to the end that the benefits thereof should not be denied upon technical, narrow and strict interpretations. The Act, however, also insures a limited and determinate liability for employers, and the court cannot legislate expanded liability under the guise of construing a statute liberally. The rule of statutory construction is to give the legislative intent full effect when interpreting the language of the statute. While the Act should be liberally construed to benefit the employee, the plain and unmistakable language of the statute must be followed.
306 N.C. 706, 709-10, 295 S.E.2d 458, 460-61 (1982) (citations omitted) (internal quotations omitted) (emphasis added).
The Act’s plain language specifically provides that an employee’s injury is compensable only when the injury “aris[es] out of and in the course of the employment.” N.C.G.S. § 97-2(6) (1999). *529Furthermore, an employee’s common law rights against the employer are abrogated and the exclusive remedy for on-the-job injuries lies within the Act:
If the employee and the employer are subject to and have complied with the provisions of this Article, then the rights and remedies herein granted to the employee •. . . shall exclude all other rights and remedies of the employee ... as against the employer at common law or otherwise on account of such injury or death.
N.C.G.S. § 97-10.1 (1999) (emphasis added). Cf. Ind. Code § 22-3-2-6 (2002); Or. Rev. Stat. § 656.018 (2001). This section limits an employee, whose injury occurred by accident and arose out of and in the course of the employment, to the rights and remedies provided by the Act. “An injury arises out of the employment ‘when it is a natural and probable consequence or incident of the employment and a natural result of one of its risks, so there is some causal relation between the injury and the performance of some service of the employment.’ ” Hogan v. Forsyth Country Club Co., 79 N.C. App. 483, 496, 340 S.E.2d 116, 124 (1986) (quoting Robbins v. Nicholson, 281 N.C. 234, 239, 188 S.E.2d 350, 354 (1972)).
Additionally the plain language of the statute establishes that the abrogation of an employee’s common law rights and remedies against his employer applies only to the employer. A court is barred from hearing any common law action brought by the employee against the employer for the same injury. N.C.G.S. § 97-10.1 (1999). The Act expressly permits actions against third-party tortfeasors, so long as the third-party is not the employer or a fellow employee. N.C.G.S. § 97-10.2 (1999); Lovette v. Lloyd, 236 N.C. 663, 667, 73 S.E.2d 886, 890 (1953). Cf. Ind. Code § 22-3-2-13 (2002); Or. Rev. Stat. § 656.154 (2001).
An employee is permitted to bring a malpractice claim against physicians who treat an employee’s compensable injury. Bryant v. Dougherty, 267 N.C. 545, 148 S.E.2d 548 (1966). This right was affirmed in North Carolina Chiropractic Ass’n, Inc. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 89 N.C. App. 1, 6, 365 S.E.2d 312, 315 (1988), wherein Judge Parker (now Justice) wrote: “The Act does not take away common law rights that are unrelated to the employer-employee relationship.”
In affirming an employee’s right to sue a vocational rehabilitation company in tort, the Indiana Court of Appeals, in Campbell, cogently *530noted that “various entities may be involved in assisting employers to fulfill their obligations under the worker’s compensation laws, such as ambulance services, hospitals, physicians, and others providing medical and rehabilitative care covered under worker’s compensation.” Campbell, 670 N.E.2d at 930. The same is true under North Carolina’s Workers’ Compensation Act.
Here, the allegedly negligent conduct of defendants is not the kind of harm for which our Workers’ Compensation Act was intended to compensate. Plaintiff’s negligence action against these two vocational rehabilitation therapists is separate and distinct from the plaintiff’s original workers’ compensation claim. The injury underlying plaintiffs claim against the defendants did not arise out of and in the course of employment, nor did it result naturally and unavoidably from the original injury that served as the basis for plaintiffs original workers’ compensation claim. N.C.G.S. § 97-2(6) (1999); see Bryant, 267 N.C. at 548, 148 S.E.2d at 551-52; Hogan, 79 N.C. App. at 496, 340 S.E.2d at 124. Defendants’ allegedly negligent conduct cannot rationally be considered the natural result of plaintiff’s compensable injury. One cannot say that when a vocational rehabilitation therapist treats an injured worker it is naturally expected that further injury will result. Indeed, the reasonable expectation is that the original injury will be ameliorated.
Plaintiff’s action for negligent infliction of emotional distress against two third-party vocational rehabilitation therapists is analogous, for jurisdictional purposes, to a medical malpractice claim against a treating physician. After being injured during the course of employment, employees often require treatment by third-party professionals. In Bryant v. Dougherty, 267 N.C. at 548, 148 S.E.2d at 551-52, our Supreme Court wrote:
The Workmen’s Compensation Act does not confer upon the Commission jurisdiction to hear and determine an action, brought by an injured employee against a physician or surgeon, to recover damages for injury due to the negligence of the latter in the performance of his professional services to the employee. G.S. § 97-26 relates to the right of the employee to recover damages or benefits under the Act from the employer, and so from the insurance carrier of the employer. It does not impose liability upon the physician or surgeon or relieve him thereof.
Here, defendants rendered professional services to plaintiff. As with surgeons or physicians, North Carolina’s Workers’ Compensa*531tion Act does not impose liability upon rehabilitation therapists or relieve them thereof. See id.
Our Act is founded on the principle that in forming the employer-employee relationship, both employer and employee mutually assent to the Act’s governance of claims by employee against the employer for injuries to employee arising out of the scope of employment. As to the relationship between a third-party care provider and an employee pursuing a compensable claim, no mutual assent to submit to the Workers’ Compensation Act exists. Plaintiff’s claim, though it arose during treatment for a compensable injury, as do many medical malpractice claims, is not the type of claim that was intended to be covered by our Workers’ Compensation Act.
Accordingly, I would hold that jurisdiction of plaintiff’s claim lies squarely with the trial court. For the foregoing reasons and the reasons stated in Riley, 144 N.C. App. 357, 547 S.E.2d 831, I would reverse the trial court’s decision and remand for trial.