Court Opinion

ID: 9578177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:42:25.015962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:01.918338
License: Public Domain

OAKS, Justice,
concurring with comments:
I concur in the Court’s opinion, with this additional explanation.
This ease turns on the meaning of the word “remainder” in § 35-1-69, quoted in the Court’s opinion. This is the amount directed to be paid from the Second Injury Fund. In McPhie v. Industrial Commission, Utah, 567 P.2d 153,155 (1977), we interpreted “remainder” to mean “whatever remains to be paid after the employer has discharged its liability .... ” That interpretation contemplates the usual circumstance where an employee seeks adjudication of an injury whose effects have been exacerbated by a previously incurred permanent incapacity for which no award can be made in the current proceeding. Such was the case in Capitano and Northwest, cited in the Court’s opinion, and in the cases they cite. That sequence poses the difficult issue treated by the 1981 statutory amendment quoted in footnote 1 of the Court’s opinion: Where the employee has already been compensated for the earlier incapacity, good sense and the apparent legislative purpose would preclude a duplicate payment from the Second Injury Fund. But in this case, which must be decided under the pre-1981 legislation, the literal meaning of “remainder” and the language of the Capitano opinion, 610 P.2d at 337, lend support to the employee’s efforts to obtain such a duplicate payment.
In contrast, this case is not difficult. Here there was no prior incapacity for which no award could be made in the current proceeding. Here the employee was pursuing his claims simultaneously against the earlier employer, McKee, and the later employer, Jacobsen. The same medical report concerned both the earlier and the later injuries. And the Commission fixed the two employers’ liabilities simultaneously by a single order. Each employer was held responsible for 50% of the medical expenses and for 50% of the fractional permanent impairment. In that circumstance, there is no “remainder” for which the present “em*85ployers” (see § 68-3-12(6)) are not liable. Consequently, there is no amount directed to be paid out of the Second Injury Fund. § 35-1-69.
DURHAM, J., also concurs in the concurring comments of OAKS, J.