Court Opinion

ID: 9664079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:02:11.832564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:01.912409
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would affirm the trial court’s determination that any right acquired by the employer or workers’ compensation insurer is based on subrogation to the employee’s cause of action against a third party. Because the employee is precluded by the no-fault automobile insurance act from suing the third-party tortfeasor for basic economic loss, the employee has no right to which Travelers could be subrogat-ed.
Subdivision 5 by its terms creates a right of subrogation in the employer. Since sub-rogation “will be applied wherever a person not acting voluntarily, but under some compulsion, pays a debt or discharges an obligation for which another is primarily liable and which in equity and good conscience ought to be discharged by the latter,” 83 C.J.S. Subrogation § 8, p. 600, it is clear that Travelers would not be entitled to recover from the tortfeasor under subdivision 5, because, by virtue of the no-fault act, the tortfeasor is not primarily liable for the injured employee’s medical expenses.
In American Mutual Liability Ins. Co. v. Reed Cleaners, 265 Minn. 503, 122 N.W.2d 178 (1963), we rejected the argument that the workers’ compensation insurer had a right of indemnity independent of its right to subrogation under subdivision. 5. Although we were not called upon in that case to examine the nature of the rights created by subdivision 7, the language of that portion of the statute indicates that it, too, provides a right of subrogation only.
Subdivision 7 addresses itself to the employer’s cause of action to recover medical expenses from the tortfeasor “against whom the employee may have a cause of action which may be sued under this chapter * * Similarly, the subdivision refers to this cause of action as a “separate *135additional” cause of action, which assumes that the employee also has a cause of action against the tortfeasor. Moreover, subdivision 7 states that the employer’s cause of action may be asserted separately or “in the action commenced by the employee or the employer under this chapter * * *.” This latter reference is to the action against the tortfeasor that may be brought under subdivision 5. See, Froysland v. Leef Bros., Inc., 293 Minn. 201, 197 N.W.2d 656 (1972). It would be incongruous to interpret subdivision 7 to establish a cause of action for the recovery of medical expenses that could be asserted either separately as an independent claim for indemnification, or in conjunction with a cause of action brought pursuant to subdivision 5, which only grants the employer subrogation rights, for then the employer’s ability to recover would depend on a mere procedural technicality.
I would hold that Minn.Stat. 176.061, subd. 7, creates a right of subrogation in the workers’ compensation carrier and that, consequently, where the no-fault act precludes the injured employee from recovering medical expenses from the tortfeasor, the workers’ compensation carrier is likewise precluded from bringing suit.