Court Opinion

ID: 9563795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:47:22.272208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:04.773534
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Judge,
concurring fully and specially.
While I concur fully in the majority opinion, I write separately to underscore the importance of our holding that Palacias is an “employee” for purposes of Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation Act. As the majority correctly holds, this is not a case of federal preemption. Indeed, this is a case that is squarely governed by the clear and well-defined provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act. Despite the fact that Palacias is an illegal alien, and even though she originally used fraudulent documents to obtain the j anitorial position in which she was injured, the longstanding policy in Georgia under the Act mandates that Palacias be treated no differently than any other employee who is injured on the job.
When the Act was first passed in 1920, the definition of the essential term “employee” read in relevant part:
(b) Employee shall include every person, including a minor in the service of another under any contract of hire or apprenticeship, written or implied, except one whose employment is not in usual course of the trade, business, occupation or profession of the employer. . . . Minors are included even though working in violation of any child labor law or other similar statute, provided that nothing herein contained shall be construed as repealing or altering any such law or statute. . . .
Ga. L. 1920, pp. 167, 168. While later revisions to this statute moved the language concerning child workers further down in the paragraph and thus a few more lines away from the language defining *566employees as “every person under any contract of hire or apprenticeship,” both parts of the statute have survived virtually intact over the years. See OCGA § 34-9-1 (2).
From the moment this legislation was enacted, the General Assembly anticipated that employers might hire illegal workers and intended that such workers be covered by its workers’ compensation law. In 1920, the legislature was most concerned that such workers might well be children working in violation of the child labor laws recently passed. Today, it may be more likely that the worker has entered the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. As to all illegal workers, however, the State’s fundamental policy — implied in the original statute’s emphasis on child workers, stated outright in cases thereafter, and codified at last in 1994 — remains paramount today: that the Act “be construed reasonably and liberally” for the purpose of extending its “beneficent provisions ... to every class of workman and employee that can fairly be brought within [them].” Lee v. Claxton, 70 Ga. App. 226, 228 (28 SE2d 87) (1943); Malcom v. Sudderth, 98 Ga. App. 674, 685 (106 SE2d 367) (1958); OCGA § 34-9-23, Ga. L. 1994, p. 887, § 4 (allowing liberal construction “only for the purpose of bringing employers and employees within the provisions of this chapter and to provide protection for both”) (emphasis supplied).
Under the current statutory scheme, employees cannot sue employers for injuries sustained on the job. Likewise, employers cannot plead the illegal nature of the employment contract after an employee whom they have included for underwriting purposes on their workers’ compensation policy has been injured, regardless of whether or not they knew that the worker was illegal. The purpose of workers’ compensation insurance is to provide payment after a worker is injured on the job, and in conjunction with the Act eliminates questions as to the relative knowledge or fault of employers and employees, either at the time of injury or at the time the employment relationship was created. Slaten v. Travelers Ins. Co., 197 Ga. 1, 2-3 (28 SE2d 280) (1943); Travelers Ins. Co. v. Southern Elec., 209 Ga. App. 718, 719 (1) (434 SE2d 507) (1993).
When we hold that Palacias is entitled to workers’ compensation benefits despite her illegal status and her fraudulent obtainment of employment, then, we do only what the Workers’ Compensation Act has long required: to enforce its social contract between the employer, the person who retains the benefit of an employee’s labor, and the employee, now injured on the employer’s job. To allow an employer to reap the benefit of an employee’s services (even when such services are rendered by an illegal alien), without holding the employer responsible for the payment of workers’ compensation benefits when the employee is injured on the job, would break the social contract *567between the employer and its employee and undermine the entire purpose of Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation Act.
Decided September 13, 2004
Wilson & Epstein, Warner R. Wilson, Jr., for appellant.
Burdine & Brown, Thomas F Brown II, Claxton & Claxton, Darcy S. Duval, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Ruffin, Judge Barnes, Judge Phipps and Judge Ellington join in this opinion.