Court Opinion

ID: 9503343
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:42:06.415206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:24.122970
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
concurring.
I join the majority’s conclusion that the Workers’ Compensation Board did not err in deciding that, in enacting ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B), the legislature has excluded claimant’s injury from the scope of those injuries that are compen-sable under Oregon’s Workers’ Compensation Law, ORS 656.001 to 656.990.
Today’s decision is the first from this court to interpret ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) since the legislature adopted that provision in 1987.1 write separately to discuss an additional, and perhaps unforeseen, consequence of ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B). Understandably, the majority opinion does not delve into that topic, because it is beyond the scope of this judicial review. However, if ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B), as presently drafted, potentially will produce an outcome that the legislature never anticipated and may not have desired, the legislature will benefit from prompt notice of that fact so that it might revisit the issue in the future.
In overview, Oregon’s Workers’ Compensation Law obligates every employer to qualify as either a carrier-insured employer or a self-insured employer and, thus, to maintain assurance that subject workers of the employer “will receive compensation for compensable injuries as provided by this chapter * * ORS 656.017(1). If an employer satisfies that obligation, then ORS 656.018 confines the employer’s liability exclusively to the terms of the Workers’ Compensation Law. ORS 656.018 provides, in part:
“(l)(a) The liability of every employer who satisfies the duty required by ORS 656.017(1) is exclusive and in place of all other liability arising out of injuries, diseases, symptom complexes or similar conditions arising out of and in the *58course of employment that are sustained by subject workers, the workers’ beneficiaries and anyone otherwise entitled to recover damages from the employer on account of such conditions or claims resulting therefrom, specifically including claims for contribution or indemnity asserted by third persons from whom damages are sought on account of such conditions, except as specifically provided otherwise in this chapter.
“(2) The rights given to a subject worker and the beneficiaries of the subject worker under this chapter for injuries, diseases, symptom complexes or similar conditions arising out of and in the course of employment are in lieu of any remedies they might otherwise have for such injuries, diseases, symptom complexes or similar conditions against the worker’s employer under ORS 654.305 to 654.336 or other laws, common law or statute, except to the extent the worker is expressly given the right under this chapter to bring suit against the employer of the worker for an injury, disease, symptom complex or similar condition.
“(7) The exclusive remedy provisions and limitation on liability provisions of this chapter apply to all injuries and to diseases, symptom complexes or similar conditions of subject workers arising out of and in the course of employment whether or not they are determined to be compensable under this chapter.”
(Emphasis added.)
The provisions emphasized above make it clear that the injured worker’s statutory right to compensation turns on whether the worker has suffered a “compensable injury.” However, those statutes also create an employer immunity from worker claims (other than those grounded in or authorized by the Workers’ Compensation Law) that is not linked to the compensability of the underlying injury. ORS 656.018(2) declares that the claimant’s statutory right to benefits is “in lieu of’ other remedies for injuries or diseases that arise out of and in the course of employment. ORS 656.018(7) provides that the statutory compensation remedy is the injured worker’s exclusive remedy for all injuries arising out of and in *59the course of employment regardless of the compensability of the injury.
ORS 656.005(7)(a) defines “compensable injury” as “an accidental injury, or accidental injury to prosthetic appliances, arising out of and in the course of employment requiring medical services or resulting in disability or death * * *[,]” subject to certain limitations for consequential and combined conditions.1 However, ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) declares that certain injuries from “recreational or social activities” are not “compensable” injuries. That subsection, which is the interpretive focal point of this case, provides:
“(b) ‘Compensable injury’ does not include:
“(B) Injury incurred while engaging in or performing, or as the result of engaging in or performing, any recreational or social activities primarily for the worker’s personal pleasure * * *.”
As the majority correctly points out, the legislature incorporated into that statutory provision alternative bases for excluding recreational or social activity injuries. First, that provision excludes injuries that are the result of engaging in or performing any recreational or social activities primarily for the worker’s personal pleasure. The term “result,” in context, incorporates the familiar concept of legal causation as a requirement for exclusion. Thus, that prong of the provision excludes an injury from compensability only if the recreational or social activity caused the injury.
In addition, ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) excludes from compensability any injury incurred while engaging in or performing any recreational or social activities primarily for the worker’s personal pleasure. The majority correctly infers from the text of that prong of the statutory provision that the *60legislature did not intend that text to incorporate a requirement of legal causation. Reading in another causation requirement would create a needless redundancy: The first prong of the provision, discussed above, excludes from com-pensability any injury that a recreational or social activity causes. To accord interpretive significance to the legislature’s use of the term “while,” the majority correctly reads that term to exclude an injury from compensability if there is a temporal coincidence between the injury and a recreational or social activity. Thus, the statutory provision excludes from compensability any injury that occurs at the same time that the employee engages in or performs a recreational or social activity, even if the injury arises out of and in the course of employment and the sole source of the risk of injury is the workplace.
The legislature’s exclusion based on a temporal coincidence between the injury and the employee’s recreational or social activity renders claimant’s injury noncompensable. Here, the immediate cause of claimant’s injury was the errant driving behavior of a coworker — a classic work-related risk — not carelessness by claimant in operating a motorcycle. Nonetheless, ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) renders the injury non-compensable because it occurred while claimant was engaged in the recreational activity of attempting to park a motorcycle. The facts that claimant simultaneously was carrying out his work assignment, i.e., waiting on the employer’s lot for customers to arrive, and was paid for his time, are immaterial. The principal relevant fact is the temporal coincidence between claimant’s injury and the recreational or social activity in which he was engaged.
ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) will pose interpretive problems for the board and the courts in the future. The scope of the phrase “recreational or social activities” is one potential source of difficulty. Do the terms “recreational” and “social,” as modifiers of “activities,” refer to a set of organized activities, behaviors or events, or do they instead describe the employee’s motive in engaging in a broad range of actions at work, whether alone or with others, that are not purely work assignments?
*61The phrase “primarily for the worker’s personal pleasure” necessarily invites litigation over the employee’s state of mind in engaging in or performing recreational or social activities. That will be true even if the activity is one that the employer has assigned to the worker as part of the job. Does the statute render an injury noncompensable if the worker incurred it while engaged in an employer-mandated recreational activity that the worker was only too happy to perform (e.g., testing an employer’s camping products while backpacking in a scenic wilderness)?
The most significant consequence of the enactment of ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) will not be the sorts of interpretive difficulties to which I have alluded and which the board and the courts will address in due time. Rather, it is in respect to the tort law ramifications of (1) the legislature’s categorical exclusion of a class of work-related injuries from the scope of “compensable” injuries under the Workers’ Compensation Law; and (2) the restriction of the worker’s remedy for a work-related injury to that set out in the Workers’ Compensation Law whether or not the injury is compensable.
In Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc., 332 Or 83, 23 P3d 333 (2001), this court held that Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution limits the authority of the Oregon legislature to restrict a worker’s right to seek a remedy by due course of law for injuries resulting from another person’s negligence in the workplace.2 In that case, the claimant had developed an occupational disease in his lungs due to the use of harsh chemicals in the workplace. The employer denied his claim for compensation, and an administrative law judge upheld the denial, because the claimant had failed to prove that the workplace was the major contributing cause of the disease, as the Occupational Disease Law, ORS 656.802 to 656.807, required. Id. at 87.
The worker brought an action in court against the employer for negligence. The employer argued that, even if the worker had suffered a work-related injury but could not *62receive compensation, the statutes sheltered the employer from tort litigation by restricting the worker to the remedies provided in the workers’ compensation system whether or not the injury was compensable.
On appeal, this court determined that the employer had interpreted the statutes correctly. However, this court concluded that the statutes had left the worker with no remedy for his work-related illness. Because the worker’s illness was an injury respecting the “person,” in the constitutional sense, for which the common law had afforded a remedy, this court held that Article I, section 10, deprived the legislature of the authority to deny a remedy to the worker. Id. at 135-36. This court stated that:
“[t]he exclusive remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) are unconstitutional under the remedy clause, because they leave the worker with no process through which to seek redress for an injury for which a cause of action existed at common law.”
Id. at 135. The court remanded the worker’s negligence claim to the trial court for further proceedings.
The legislature’s policy choice with respect to a worker’s injury incurred during recreational or social activities is analogous to the policy choice addressed in Smothers regarding injuries or diseases for which the workplace is less than the major contributing cause. The legislature has declared that injuries incurred as the result of, or while, performing recreational or social activities are not compensable. Yet the legislature also has declared that the remedies in the Workers’ Compensation Law are claimant’s exclusive remedy for injuries and diseases arising out of and in the course of employment whether or not those injuries and diseases are compensable. Like the occupational disease in Smothers, claimant’s injury arose out of and in the course of employment. In net terms, the legislature has attempted to exclude claimant’s injury from compensability and to preclude claimant from recovering any remedy in any other forum.
There is little doubt that claimant suffered an injury to his “person,” in the constitutional sense, when the coworker drove into him. It is also clear that, at common law, *63the employer was exposed to liability if he failed to provide a reasonably safe place in which to work, such as by hiring incompetent workers who exposed other workers to dangerous conditions in the workplace.3
The foregoing discussion compels the conclusion that, under the logic of Smothers, the legislature cannot exclude claimant’s injury from compensability under the Workers’ Compensation Law and, at the same time, preclude claimant from resorting to another forum, such as Oregon’s courts, to obtain a remedy for his workplace injury. The remedy clause in Article I, section 10,
“mandates that a remedy be available to all persons— including workers — for injuries to ‘absolute’ common-law rights for which a cause of action existed when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857.”
Smothers, 332 Or at 136.
Therefore, the combined effect of ORS 656.005(7)(b)(B) and ORS 656.018(l)(a), (2), and (7) now leaves employers exposed to liability in tort to workers for injuries that result from or occur during recreational or social activities and that arise out of and in the course of employment. Whether the legislature intended that consequence is beside the point; it is nonetheless the predicable outcome of an examination of the legislature’s statutory policy choices in light of the legal principle that Article I, section 10, embodies. The question whether to alter the policy choice reflected in any of the statutes discussed above is for the legislature to decide.4
I concur.
Riggs, J., joins in this concurring opinion.

 Oregon law defines “occupational disease” in part as “any disease or infection arising out of and in the course of employment * * *[,]” ORS 656.802(l)(a), and considers an occupational disease “an injury for employees of employers who have come under this chapter * * *[’]” subject to certain requirements that pertain to occupational disease claims, ORS 656.804. Consequently, the rules that govern whether a worker’s compensation remedy for an injury is an exclusive remedy apply with equal force to an occupational disease.

 Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution provides:
“No court shall be secret, hut justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase, completely and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.”

 In Smothers, this court analyzed Anderson v. Bennett, 16 Or 515, 19 P 765 (1888), in which the plaintiff suffered blindness when his supervisor negligently ordered the plaintiff to drill a hole in some rock, causing an explosion. The court held that the employer was exposed to liability for failure to make reasonable provision for the plaintiffs safety in the workplace. Smothers noted that that rule was a part of the common law in Oregon at the time of the adoption of the state constitution in 1857. Smothers, 332 Or at 131.

 Since this court decided Smothers in 2001, the legislature has made no change to the exclusive remedy policy stated in ORS 656.018(7).