Court Opinion

ID: 9560857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:57:42.306592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:15.770940
License: Public Domain

*1125OPALA, Chief Justice,
concurring in Part I only insofar as it holds that temporary and permanent total and temporary partial disability payments for in-coverture periods are spousal assets.
In Part I of today’s opinion the court holds that “[a] workers’ compensation disability award is marital property only to the extent that it recompenses for the couple’s loss of income during the marriage. To the extent that it compensates for loss of post-divorce earnings by the injured party, it is separate property.”1 In my view, the question whether payments in satisfaction of a workers’ compensation claim constitute separate or marital property depends upon the kind of disability for which benefits are paid. Although all payouts are tied to an earnings’ formula, I would hold today that payments for permanent partial disability may not be included in the marital estate. Under Oklahoma’s current benefits regime an injured worker with permanent partial disability receives compensation for loss of bodily (physical) function alone. None of it is intended as replacement of lost earnings. On the other hand, benefits for temporary total disability2 as well as permanent total disability3 may be treated as marital property. They are clearly designed as replacement of lost earnings rather than as recompense for loss of the worker’s corporal fitness.
When first enacted in 1915,4 Oklahoma’s regime for delivery of benefits to an injured worker was intended to restore lost earnings.5 A 1941 amendment6 eliminated the need to establish loss of earning power in order to receive compensation for permanent partial disability.7 Somewhat later and in the face of total statutory silence, “disability” came to be measured by the worker’s capacity to perform “ordinary *1126manual or mechanical labor.”8
When the present version of the Workers’ Compensation Act was enacted in 1977,9 two distinct definitions of disability were introduced — one for permanent total disability and another for permanent partial disability.10 A permanently and totally disabled worker is one who lacks the capacity to earn any wages and is hence eligible for wage replacement.11 Permanent partial disability, on the other hand, means permanent impairment.12 “Permanent impairment” is defined as “any anatomical or functional abnormality or loss after reasonable medical treatment has been achieved, which abnormality or loss the physician considers to be capable of being evaluated at the time the rating is made. * * * ”13 (Emphasis added.) This definition “not only abandons the old theory of ordinary manual or mechanical labor, but also sets up a new and more specific means of evaluating permanent partial disability by directly equating it to permanent impairment.” 14 (Emphasis added.) “Impairment” clearly stands for loss of physical function. Permanent partial disability benefits provide recompense for the worker’s lost corporal function and not for foregone income.15
In contrast to the impairment regime, the purpose of temporary or permanent total disability compensation is to replace the incapacitated worker’s lost earnings. Only the latter payments can be reached for division as marital assets. They clearly are intended as a loss-of-earnings form of payout.16 The same is also true of temporary partial disability benefits.17 This compensation form, like that for temporary total disability, is not only based on lost wages; its very purpose is to provide recompense *1127for loss of income “during the continuance” of the disability period.18 As distinguished from all other payout classes, permanent partial disability contemplates recompense for lost physical fitness, though the amount paid the worker is measured by a percentage of wages he (or she) would have earned but for the covered injury.19
Unlike today’s opinion, I would treat an award for permanent partial disability as separate property of the married awardee to whom it is a form of recovery for his (or her) impaired body function. Benefits for temporary and permanent total disability and for temporary partial disability are for lost income. Payments that fall under these latter categories should hence be legally available for spousal division.
The husband in this divorce case settled his workers’ compensation claim by joint petition. The record does not disclose the nature of his impaired physical condition. To the extent that the lump-sum settlement may be found to include compensation for permanent partial disability, it should be severed on remand from the rest of the award and set apart to the husband as his separate, non-marital asset.
For the reasons stated, I would not classify permanent partial disability as replacement of earnings but as recompense for lost bodily function. The concept is too closely associated with “impaired corporal fitness” to be transmogrified by judicial fiat into a marital asset.20

. The court adopts the "analytical approach” to determine whether a compensation award is to be treated as separate or marital property. According to today’s opinion "the separate property of the injured spouse includes economic losses occurring after the termination of the marriage, including the amount of the award which constitutes loss of future wages and future medical expenses.”

. See 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22(1), whose pertinent terms are:
" * * * In case of total disability adjudged to be permanent, sixty-six and two-thirds percent ... of the employee's average weekly wages shall be paid to the employee during the continuance thereof_” (Emphasis added.)

. Our workers’ compensation reparations regime has neither common-law roots nor antecedents. It is traceable to an English statute modeled after a German prototype of the Bismarck era. See Fenwick v. Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Okl., 792 P.2d 60, 64, (1990) (Opala, V.C.J., dissenting).

. See Nelson v. Rialto Mining Co., 194 Okl. 628, 154 P.2d 87, 89 (1944); United States Casualty Co. v. Steiger, 179 Okl. 407, 66 P.2d 55, 57 (1937).

. The terms of 85 O.S.1941 § 22 were amended to provide as follows:
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"Other Cases: In all other classes of disabilities, excluding only those heretofore referred to in sub-division three, [regarding permanent partial disability,] which disabilities result in loss of use of any portion of an employee’s body, and which disabilities are permanent in quality but partial in character, the compensation ordered paid shall be sixty-six and two-thirds per centum of the average weekly wage during that portion of the number of weeks which the partial disability of the employee bears to the total permanent disability. “ * * * " (Emphasis added.)
Before 1941 this paragraph in § 22 provided as follows:
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"Other cases: In this class of disabilities^ those which are permanent and partial,] the compensation shall be sixty-six and two-thirds per centum of the difference between his average weekly wages and his wage earning capacity thereafter in the same employment. ...”

. Service Pipe Line Company v. Cargill, Okl., 289 P.2d 961, 962-963 (1955); Folson Auto Supply v. Bristow, Okl., 275 P.2d 706, 710 (1954). See also Amerada Petroleum Corporation v. Lovelace, 184 Okl. 140, 85 P.2d 407 (1938) (the court’s syllabus ¶ 1), where the court held that a claimant is entitled to compensation for permanent partial disability "without regard to the effect thereof upon his earning capacity.”

. See J.E. Trigg Drilling Co. v. Daniels, 193 Okl. 644, 145 P.2d 944, 946 (1944), where the court held that ‘‘[d] isabilities within the meaning of the act refer to lack of ability to do ordinary manual or mechanical work and labor_” (Emphasis added.)

. 85 O.S.1981 § 1 et seq.; Okl.Sess.L.1977, ch. 234 § 1 et seq., effective July 1, 1978.

. See Sturm, The Workers’ Compensation Act of 1977, 3 Okl.City Univ.L.R. 1, 12 (1978).

. 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 3(12). The pertinent terms of § 3(12) provide:
"(12) ‘Permanent total disability’ means incapacity because of accidental injury or occupational disease to earn any wages in any employment for which the employee is or becomes physically suited_” (Emphasis added.)
"This definition abandons the theory of ordinary manual or mechanical labor and focuses only upon the purely economic aspects of whether the employee has been removed completely from the job market by his injury." Sturm, The Workers’ Compensation Act of 1977, supra note 10 at 13.

. 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 3(13). The terms of § 3(13) are:
"(13) 'Permanent partial disability’ means permanent disability which is less than total and shall be equal to or the same as permanent impairment." (Emphasis added.)

. 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 3(11).

. Sturm, The Workers’ Compensation Act of 1977, supra note 10 at 13-14.

. Although for actuarial purposes the compensation rates are based upon earnings, the benefits allowed for permanent partial disability are not. See 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22(3), whose pertinent terms provide:
“ * * * In case of disability, partial in character but permanent in quality, the compensation shall be sixty-six and two-thirds percent ... of the employee’s average weekly wages, and shall be paid to the employee for the period named in the schedule, as follows:
"Thumb: For the loss of thumb, sixty (60) weeks.
"First Finger: For the loss of the first finger, commonly called the index finger, thirty-five (35) weeks.
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"Arm: For the loss of an arm, two hundred fifty (250) weeks.
" * * * ” (Emphasis added.)

. See 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22(1), supra note 3, and § 22(2), supra note 2.

. See 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22(4), whose pertinent terms provide:
“4. Temporary Partial Disability. In case of temporary partial disability, except the particular cases mentioned in paragraph 3 of this sectionf regarding permanent partial disability], an injured employee shall receive sixty-six and two-thirds percent ... of the difference between his average weekly wages and his wage-earning capacity thereafter in the same employment or otherwise, if less than before the injury, during the continuance of such partial disability. * * * ” (Emphasis added.)

. The phrase "during the continuance” is included in the terms of all three subsections of 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22 which provide the schedule of compensation for permanent total disability, § 22(1), supra note 3, temporary total disability, § 22(2), supra note 2, and temporary partial disability, § 22(4), supra note 17. The subsection on permanent partial disability, § 22(3), does not contain the quoted language. See supra note 15.

. See 85 O.S.Supp.1990 § 22(3), supra note 15.

.Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the presence of a replaced earnings’ element could be infused into permanent partial disability by judicial interpretation, there would still be no legal basis for marital division of these payouts. As a class of entitlements, permanent partial disability lacks sufficient textual earmarks for its recognition as an item of spousal property interest.