Court Opinion

ID: 9600073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:24:06.165297+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:49.914757
License: Public Domain

Justice MEYER
concurring.
I concur in the result and in the principle that our court decisions should encourage the payment of benefits to injured employees while they are not receiving their regular wages, i.e., “at the very moment he needs it most.”
I am unable to concur in that portion of the Court’s opinion that discusses and interprets Moretz and Ashe. Neither of those cases has anything whatsoever to do with the issue presented in the case now before us —whether credits are due employers for payments made to employees under private disability benefit plans. The Court’s opinion interprets Moretz to hold that if a compensation carrier accepts the claim as compensable and voluntarily pays the injured employee (“at the very moment he needs it most”), the acceptance of the claim as compensable makes the payments made thereunder “due and payable when made” and therefore the carrier is not entitled to any credit for those amounts upon a final award. The Court’s opinion compounds the problem by holding for the first time in this case that the payments that were made in Ashe “would be held due and payable” under the Moretz rationale. It emphasizes under the circumstances presently before us that the employer had not accepted the plaintiffs injury as compensable, and therefore “[u]nder *119the analysis of Moretz, then, payments made by defendant pursuant to the plan cannot be characterized as due and payable.” The Court’s opinion clearly implies that if a compensation carrier “stonewalls” a claim by denying coverage, it is entitled to a credit for the amount advanced because the carrier had thereby “accepted the plaintiffs injury as compensable” and therefore would not be entitled to a credit on the final award under N.C.G.S. § 97-42. I cannot think of any interpretation of Moretz and Ashe that would be more detrimental to injured employees.
I see no need to set the principle of Moretz in stone, assuming the Court’s opinion interprets its holding correctly. If indeed Moretz and Ashe stand for the proposition that, when a carrier who contests coverage steps forward voluntarily and pays during the period the worker is disabled, the carrier is not entitled to a credit solely by reason of the fact that benefits were paid voluntarily, this Court needs to revisit those cases.