Court Opinion

ID: 9769814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:02:37.375225+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:08.310526
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I must dissent.
The Worker’s Compensation Act has the beneficent purpose of compensating injured workers for employment-related injuries without regard to fault. However, it is not a general accident insurance policy and does not purport to compensate for all damages sustained as a result of the injury. Tyler-Couch Construction Co. v. Elmore, Ky., 264 S.W.2d 56 (1954); National Distillers Products Corp. v. Jones, 309 Ky. 394, 217 S.W.2d 813 (1948); Mary Helen Coal Corp. v. Dusina, 308 Ky. 658, 215 S.W.2d 563 (1948). It is a purely statutory remedy and recovery of benefits can only be had in accordance with its statutory provisions. 99 C.J.S., Workmen’s Compensation § 6.
In this case, Hubert Ramey, a totally disabled employee, now deceased, asserted a claim for $87,000.00 for services rendered for him by his wife during his disability. This sum represents $4.00 per hour, twelve hours *60per day, seven days per week, for four years. Presumably, if this claim' is granted, there will be a supplemental claim for services rendered thereafter until the date of Mr. Ramey’s death.
Except for changing bandages, which was required for approximately two months following Mr. Ramey’s release from the hospital, the services for which his wife seeks compensation consisted of cooking meals, cleaning house, helping her husband in and out of the bathtub (although he testified he needed little help), and accompanying him when he walked with his prostheses to insure that he would not fall (although he testified that he used a walker to protect himself from that eventuality). The wife is untrained as a nurse, although she did watch the nurses at the hospital to learn how to change her husband’s bandages. Mr. Ramey’s treating physician described the services rendered by his wife as “companion care.”
KRS 342.020(1) provides in pertinent part as follows:
[T]he employer shall pay for the cure and relief from the effects of an injury ... the medical, surgical, and hospital treatment, including nursing, medical, and surgical supplies and appliances, as may reasonably be required at the time of the injury and thereafter during disability....
Thus, the initial, and in my view only, issue we need to decide is whether the type of services provided to Mr. Ramey by his wife falls within the category of “medical, surgical, and hospital treatment.”
In the only other context in which this issue has arisen, we held that chiropractic treatment did not constitute “medical treatment” within the contemplation of KRS 342.020(1), thus was not compensable. Neagle v. State Highway Department, Ky., 371 S.W.2d 630 (1963). Fifteen years later, the legislature enacted a statute permitting recovery for services rendered by a licensed chiropractor. 1978 Ky.Acts ch. 165, § 1; 1978 Ky.Acts ch. 282, § 20. This enactment was not passed as an amendment to the medical treatment statute, KRS 342.020, but as a separate statute, KRS 342.019, dealing only with chiropractic services. Subsequently, we held that chiropractic services rendered after the statute’s effective date were recoverable. Moss v. Holloway Construction Co., Ky., 644 S.W.2d 331 (1982). In doing so, we noted that the enactment of KRS 342.019 “overcame the provisions of KRS 342.020, which limited payment to medical treatment as defined by statute.” Id. at 332. Thus, although the General Assembly chose to compensate for chiropractic services, neither the legislature nor this Court has recognized such services to constitute “medical treatment.”
If services provided by a licensed chiropractor do not qualify as the type of compen-sable “medical treatment” contemplated by KRS 342.020, then “companion care” provided by an unlicensed and untrained spouse surely cannot qualify as such. This conclusion is in accord with the great weight of authority. See generally, 99 C.J.S. Workmen’s Compensation § 268.
Also of relevance here is KRS 342.0011(15), which defines “medical services” to mean “medical, surgical, dental,. hospital, nursing, and medical rehabilitation services, medicines, and fittings for artificial or prosthetic devices.” Although there is no statutory definition of “medical treatment,” the terms “medical treatment” and “medical services” appear to be interchangeable within the nine subsections of KRS 342.020. This definition clearly contemplates that medical services are those rendered by a trained professional. While the services rendered to Hubert Ramey by his wife no doubt provided him with comfort and relief, such does not constitute compensable “medical treatment” within the contemplation of KRS 342.020(1). Thus, as with respect to payments for chiropractic services, if payments for the type of home care services claimed in this case are to be made compensable, such must be accomplished by legislative enactment, not judicial fiat.
Therefore, I would reverse the Court of Appeals and reinstate the decision of the Administrative Law Judge.
STEPHENS, C.J., and JOHNSTONE, J., join this dissent.