Court Opinion

ID: 9544917
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:03:26.269557+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:46.800784
License: Public Domain

RABINO WITZ, Justice,
with whom MATTHEWS, Justice joins, dissenting.
I would affirm the superior court’s reversal of the Board’s award of workers’ compensation in this case. In my view, the superior court’s ruling that temporary total disability benefits cease once the employee’s condition becomes medically stable is more consonant with Alaska’s workers’ compensation statutes than is the majority’s construction.
The majority’s major legal premise is that temporary total benefits are available after the medical condition of the injured employee has stablized. Case law from other jurisdictions overwhelmingly reflects the view that medical stabilization, or maximum physical recovery, marks the end of temporary disability.1 The Alaska legislature has enacted provisions for temporary total disability benefits,2 for permanent partial disability benefits,3 and for compensation during vocational rehabilitation.4 For the court to now hold that temporary benefits should extend through rehabilita*1170tion is to judicially fill a gap which there is no indication the legislature intended to fill.5
Further, in my view, the majority’s conclusion that the Board may award temporary total disability benefits to an employee with an unscheduled disability whose condition has stabilized medically, but who is pursuing an approved vocational rehabilitation program, effectively writes out a portion of AS 23.30.191. This statute provides for supplemental payments during rehabilitation if an employee is no longer entitled to temporary total benefits.6 If, as a matter of law, an employee who is participating in a vocational rehabilitation program is still temporarily disabled, there is no need for a statutory provision entitling the employee to maintenance payments on the ground that he is no longer eligible for temporary disability benefits. In short, I think AS 23.30.191 contemplates that an injured worker’s condition may be permanent for the purpose of payment of benefits while the worker is participating in a vocational rehabilitation program.

. See, e.g., Speigner v. McGhee, 55 Ala.App. 384, 316 So.2d 215, cert, denied, 294 Ala. 769, 316 So.2d 221 (1975); Home Ins. Co. v. Industrial Comm’n, 23 Ariz.App. 90, 530 P.2d 1123 (1975); Kirkland v. Benedict & Jordan, 120 So.2d 169 (Fla.1960); Morrison Merchandising Corp. v. Rambeau, 377 So.2d 234 (Fla.Ct.App.1979), cert, denied, 386 So.2d 640 (Fla. 1980); Crabtree v. Beech Aircrañ Co., 229 Kan. 440, 625 P.2d 453 (1981); Azwell v. Franklin Assocs., 374 So.2d 766 (Miss.1979); Anderson v. Carlsons Transport, 178 Mont. 290, 583 P.2d 440 (1978); Johnson v. State Accident Ins. Fund, 18 Or.App. 152, 524 P.2d 559 (1974) (by statute); Bums v. Joyner, 264 S.C. 207, 213 S.E.2d 734 (1975); Brown Shoe Co. v. Pipes, 581 S.W.2d 140 (Tenn.1979).
Larson acknowledges that the end of the “healing period” and consequent “stabilization” of one’s physical condition “determines in most states when temporary benefits cease and when the extent of permanent disability can be appraised, for purposes of making either a permanent partial or a permanent total award.” 2 A. Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 57.12, at 10-9 (1981) (footnote omitted). He proposes the following test for distinguishing between a “temporary” and a “permanent” disability:
Once the physical condition is stabilized, the question becomes: is the inability to get work the result of the injury? If it is, the straightforward approach would then be to find the claimant permanently disabled by his residual impairment. If later the claimant gets steady employment, the case can be reopened. In the meantime, the claimant is definitely disabled in the compensation sense, because his physical impairment causes his unemployment; but at the same time the disability cannot accurately be characterized as temporary, since it has become stable and what remains is permanent. By the process of elimination, one comes to a total permanent award, subject of course to reopening.
Id. at 10-20 (footnotes omitted) (emphasis supplied).

. AS 23.30.185.

. AS 23.30.190.

. AS 23.30.040(e), AS 23.30.191.

. See Douglass v. Gresen Mfg. Co., 300 Minn. 82, 217 N.W.2d 846, 847 (1974) (per curiam).

. AS 23.30.191 provides in pertinent part that [a]n employee, who, as a result of injury, ... is being rehabilitated ... and who is not entitled to further temporary total disability or temporary partial disability compensation ... may receive additional compensation necessary for his rehabilitation ....