Court Opinion

ID: 9643118
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:20:00.492993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:57.628637
License: Public Domain

Donald L. Corbin, Justice, dissenting. I dissent. Historically, since the inception of the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Act, an endless string of case law has espoused that the Workers’ Compensation Act is a remedial act for the benevolent and humanitarian purpose of protecting our injured workers in this state. See, e.g., Osmose Wood Preserving v. Jones, 40 Ark. App. 190, 843 S.W.2d 875 (1992). The legislature and the courts have zealously enforced this principle until the legislature began to shift direction in the 1980’s. The courts continued to steadfastly protect this principle until today’s decision. Traditionally, the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Act and the interpreting case law construed the term “injury” as being synonymous with “compensable injury.” There is no doubt that the legislature’s intent in the passage of Act 796 of 1993, in fact its avowed purpose, was to overrule our decisions in Thomas v. Valmac Indus., Inc., 306 Ark. 228, 812 S.W.2d 673 (1991), Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Baysinger, 306 Ark. 239, 812 S.W.2d 463 (1991), and Mapco, Inc. v. Payne, 306 Ark. 198, 812 S.W.2d 483 (1991), wherein we had this to say about Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-107 as it existed then, prior to Act 796: This statutory provision is the clearest announcement by our legislature of a strong public policy that condemns retaliatory conduct by an employer who refuses to reemploy an employee for exercising a statutorily confirmed right to compensation for job-related injuries. Mapco, 306 at 201, 812 S.W.2d at 485. Because of the historical and traditional usage of the term “injury” being synonymous with “compensable injury,” words of art under our compensation act, the legislature, which certainly removed the right of an injured employee to a remedy for retaliatory discharge, utilized the term “injury” in the emergency clause of the Act to mean its customary, historical and traditional usage. It is the filing of a claim for workers’ compensation by an employee injured on the job that is the nexus to any remedy or benefit available under the Workers’ Compensation Act, even under that act as it existed as of the date of appellant’s “compensable injury.” True enough, the refusal to rehire did not occur until after July 1993, but it flowed naturally from the occurrence of the filing of benefits for the January 1993 compensable injury. Glaze, J., joins in this dissent.