Court Opinion

ID: 9849497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:41:05.853997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:48.286780
License: Public Domain

Williams, C.J.
I concur with my sister Boyle’s opinion, as to both the result and much of the reasoning. However, I can only justify doing so by carrying the reasoning to its logical conclusion.
My sister Boyle correctly recognizes that workers’ compensation law disfavors a double recovery of compensation as inequitable. The same principle must disfavor the occurrence of a windfall to the insurer.1
Transamerica was held liable for the entire disability and compensation award. My sister Boyle quite correctly holds that the injured worker is not entitled to receive a full recovery from Transamerica in addition to the $20,000 *353settlement reached with Great American. The full recovery must be reduced by $20,000 to avoid a double recovery. I agree that that is just and the correct result under workers’ compensation law principles.
However, I do not find it just that Transamerica, which was liable for full compensation, should receive a $20,000 windfall arid that Great American, which, it turns out, had no liability, should be out $20,000.
In justice, one cannot support giving a windfall to Transamerica by giving it the benefit of the settlement paid by Great American to the injured worker to avoid a double recovery to the injured. Why should Transamerica be $20,000 richer by not having to pay a liability it owed, and Great American $20,000 poorer for paying where it had no liability?
It is true that Great American did not have to settle, and perhaps it gained some advantage by settling. But as between Great American and Transamerica, Great American did what public' policy favored, namely settled, whereas Trans-america contested liability and delayed recovery by the injured worker, a result the law seeks to avoid. The courts would do a disservice to public policy if they rewarded those who avoided following public policy as against those who pursued it. For this reason, I can only justify denying the injured worker double recovery by deducting from the second insurer’s liability if it is understood that the second insurer is not entitled to a windfall, but is liable to indemnify the first insurer whose settlement provided the rationale for reducing the second insurer’s total liability pro tanto.2
*354In conclusion, I justify my concurrence with the result and much of the reasoning of my sister Boyle by carrying the principle of no windfall one step further, so that neither the worker nor Trans-america is entitled to a windfall, and so that the public policy favoring settlements will be followed.

 Justice Boyle recognizes the possibility of this argument in her footnote 6.

 In footnote 6 of Justice Boyle’s opinion, she observes:
"While that incentive might be further enhanced, and justice better *354served, by a rule allowing an improvidently redeeming insurer to recover the redemption amount in an action against the insurer determined to be liable, we decline to reach that issue, which has been neither briefed nor argued in the instant case.”
Justice Boyle makes a good point: the effect of the credit on the improvidently settling insurer was not addressed by the present litigants. This is understandable since the party most concerned with this issue is Great American, which is not a party to this case.
However, I cannot reach my conclusion regarding Transamerica’s credit without addressing the right of indemnification in Great American, despite the lack of briefing and argument on this issue, because there is no justification for one without the other.
Finally, in addition, Justice Boyle argues that "a contrary holding would create an unjustified distinction between plaintiffs employed by successively insured employers and those employed by self- or singly insured employers” (ante, p 350). The same argument applies to not recognizing a right to indemnification. But for the second insurer, the first or self-insurer would have been liable for the whole compensation award, and there would have been no windfall to the insurer.