Court Opinion

ID: 9855001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:18:09.376509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:38.454218
License: Public Domain

BENTON, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in Parts I, II, and III of the opinion and in the decision to remand based upon the Supreme Court’s decision in The Stenrich Group v. Jemmott, 251 Va. 186, 467 S.E.2d 795 (1996). Because I would uphold the commission’s decision *555to equally divide between the insurers the liability for total disability caused by two separate injuries, I do not join in Part IV of the opinion.
The majority opinion applies Code § 65.2-506 in reversing the commission’s decision. That statute reads as follows:
If an employee receives an injury for which compensation is payable while he is still receiving or entitled to compensation for a previous injury in the same employment, he shall not at the same time be entitled to compensation for both injuries, but if he is, at the time of the second injury, receiving compensation under the provisions of § 65.2-503, payments of compensation thereunder shall be suspended during the period compensation is paid on account of the second injury, and after the termination of payments of compensation for the second injury, payments on account of the first injury shall be resumed and continued until the entire amount originally awarded has been paid. However, if, at the time of the second injury, he is receiving compensation under the provisions of § 65.2-502, then no compensation shall be payable on account of the first injury during the period he receives compensation for the second injury.
Code § 65.2-506.
The initial clause in the statute expresses the general view that an employee shall not be entitled to double compensation that might enrich the employee. See Robinson v. Salvation Army, 20 Va.App. 570, 459 S.E.2d 103 (1995). The express language of Code § 65.2-506 does not include, however, a first injury causing total disability. I believe that omission was purposeful. The statutory framework implicitly contemplates that the first injury does not result in total disability because it is premised upon the view that the employee is in fact employed when the second injury occurs. A person who is totally disabled is not employable.
Pursuant to the first sentence in Code § 65.2-506, an employee receiving compensation for permanent partial loss or permanent total loss from the first injury receives all of the payments that are due under Code § 65.2-503, because pay*556ments are only suspended while the employee is being paid compensation for a second injury. After the payment for the second injury ends, payment for permanent partial loss or permanent total loss resumes and continues “until the entire amount originally awarded has been paid.” Code § 65.2-506. Thus, the employee receives the entire amount of both awards but not at the same time. No double dipping occurs because loss under Code § 65.2-503 is permanent. Indeed, Code § 65.2-503(F) specifically allows certain other compensation to be paid while compensation is paid pursuant to Code § 65.2-503.
Under the second sentence of Code § 65.2-506, if the employee is receiving compensation under Code § 65.2-502 for partial incapacity (i.e., presumably the employee is working or able to work) and suffers a second injury, the employee must be paid compensation for the second injury, whether partial or total incapacity, and “no compensation shall be payable on account of the first injury during the period he receives compensation for the second injury.” Code § 65.2-506. The commission has consistently ruled that the statute should not be applied in a way that financially penalizes an employee “as the result of having suffered two unfortunate injuries in separate industrial accidents while working for the same employer.” Donahue v. Clark Electric Contractors, Inc., 68 O.I.C. 256, 258 (1989). Clearly, the legislative “intent was to bar the payment of compensation for successive injuries in the same work which might result in a double recovery or at least a compensation rate which exceeds the pre-injury average weekly wage.” Id.
If, as the majority assumes, Code § 65.2-506 applies when the first injury is totally disabling, then whenever an employee experiences a second injury, which is less disabling (i.e., partial) the compensation for the second injury would supplant the compensation payments for the first injury. This could result in the anomaly of an employee receiving less compensation (i.e., payment for the partial disability) than he is entitled to receive for the total disability he continues to suffer.
*557In this case, the employee had a first injury that was totally disabling and a second injury that also was totally disabling. The commission found “that the claimant’s current total disability ... is due partially to her right hand condition and partially to the left. It cannot be determined which condition is predominately disabling.” Obviously, the employee can receive only one payment.
Different insurance companies provided coverage during the separate periods when the two injuries occurred. Because both injuries are totally disabling, the commission made a sound decision to require the insurers to share the risk during the total incapacity caused by the two injuries. The commission did not err in concluding that using the scheme of Code § 65.2-506 in the instance where the first injury is totally disabling causes a result that is unfair to the employee. I believe that this unfairness is manifestly the reason that the statute did not address the instance where the first injury was totally disabling. See Donahue, 68 I.O.C. 256 (dividing liability between two insurers when two separate injuries, each occurring under a different insurer, resulted in total disability).