Court Opinion

ID: 9765287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:58:13.110175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:07.901702
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice CAPPY
concurring.
I join the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court in its result, but I disassociate myself from its rationale. The lead opinion would find that Debbie Gillette had a right to receive an award under the Wrongful Death Act, and that Ms. Gillette’s right had passed by operation of the Workers’ Compensation Act to Utica National Insurance which compensated Ms. Gillette for the death of her husband while at work. The lead opinion does not explain how this right vested in Ms. Gillette, who had disclaimed her share of the award. By operation of law, “a disclaimer relates back for all purposes to the date of death of the decedent and shall, for purposes of determining the rights of other parties, be equivalent to the disclaimant having died before the decedent in a case of devolution by will or intestacy.” 20 Pa.C.S. § 6205. Therefore, Ms. Gillette’s disclaimer creates a legal fiction that assumes that she died before her husband was fatally wounded, and thus she could not have acquired a right to which Utica’s right of subrogation could attach.
I would reach the same result as the lead opinion because I would follow the rule of disclaimer to its natural conclusion, *557not solely in how it affects the wrongful death award, but also in how her fictional death before the death of her spouse would have affected the workers’ compensation award. If Ms. Gillette is treated as predeceased because of her disclaimer, we can assume that the Gillette children would have received not only the wrongful death award, but also the workers’ compensation award. That being the case, Utica would have been subrogated to the children’s right to receive a wrongful death award, having already paid them workers’ compensation benefits. If the disclaimer requires us to indulge the legal fiction that treats Ms. Gillette as if she has predeceased her husband then we are bound to follow this course to its logical conclusion in the law and uphold Utica’s right to be subrogated to whomever directly benefits. Otherwise, we leave a loophole that makes the subrogation right a nullity in wrongful death cases, and we allow a double recovery.