Court Opinion

ID: 9487580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:20:54.494332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:22.058884
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
If the majority’s conclusions about the fragility of Eileen’s medical coverage are correct, there is indeed a health care crisis. Despite COBRA’s numerous points of recognition that a non-employee spouse enjoys rights quite independent of those of her employee spouse, the majority somehow finds a statutory “plain meaning” to the contrary. And nowhere does the majority purport to construe COBRA to “take care to apply equitable principles and [to] fashion remedies to make injured parties whole.” Swint v. Protective Life Ins. Co., 779 F.Supp. 532 (S.D.Ala.1991) (quoting Ingersoll-Rand v. McClendon, 498 U.S. 133, 111 S.Ct. 478, 112 L.Ed.2d 474 (1990)).
The district court was eminently correct in saying that Congress enacted COBRA to “protect spouses and dependents of employ*1131ees from abruptly losing health care coverage” and in noting that “[i]t appears unreasonable that the action of the employee could excuse the COBRA protection of the spouse. Mlsna v. Unitel Communications, Inc., 825 F.Supp. 862, 865 (N.D.Ill.1993). Yet the majority completely ignores these factors in its adoption of a formalistic solution to a very real problem.
The statute’s “plain language” (i.e. termination for gross misconduct is not a “qualifying event” triggering a notice obligation) does not determine whether Unitel had a duty to notify Eileen Mlsna, the non-employee' spouse. The statute conceives of spouses as people in their own right. Not surprisingly, therefore, it provides for independent notice to covered spouses. 29 U.S.C. § 1166. An administrator must provide “written notice to each covered employee and spouse of the employee” at the time of commencement of coverage. 29 U.S.C. § 1166(a)(1). This notice must again be afforded given the occurrence of a qualifying event. 29 U.S.C. § 1166(a)(4). The fact that a different section of the statute, see § 1168(2), abrogates COBRA’s obligations if an employee has grossly misbehaved seems not to answer concerns about his spouse’s rights. Nor, for that matter, does it consider the plight of the dependents of that spouse — no notice obligation attaches as to those dependents because of notice to the covered spouse. See 29 U.S.C. § 1166(c) (“notification to an individual who is a qualified beneficiary as the spouse of the covered employee shall be treated as notification to all other qualified beneficiaries residing with such spouse at the time such notification is made”). The majority’s opinion conveniently forgets these provisions in favqr of the gross misconduct provision’s “plain language.” This, despite the fact that the law has long since refrained from subsuming a spouse’s legal rights into those of her husband.1
The misc0nduct provision is punitive anc¡ ought to be interpreted narrowly. The denial of benefits is intended, at base, to deter employee misconduct. See Burke v. American Stores Employee Benefits Plan, 818 F.Supp. 1131, 1136 (N.D.Ill.1993). It therefore makes little sense for an employee’s misconduct to be attributed to his spouse (and dependents) — for the purpose of denying insurance coverage, of all things. After all, we are hardly dealing with some windfall benefit to which no reliance interest attaches. Instead, we tamper with health care coverage, a subject producing great apprehension in many Americans.
The majority’s opinion also unnecessarily confuses cause and effect. The statute states that “termination” is a qualifying event. This occurs, surely, when an employee stops working. The gross misconduct provision, however, looks to the reason for which an employee stops working (i.e. the cause of the termination). If termination was caused by gross misconduct, then no qualifying event triggering a duty to notify the employee occurred. If, however, termination was caused by some factor other than gross misconduct, a qualifying event as prescribed by the statute took place. Here, Judge Zagel might have simply determined as a matter of law that Mr. Mlsna’s resignation caused termination.2 Then, the resignation itself need not be the statutory qualifying event; instead, the resignation might merely negate the possibility of “termination for gross misconduct.” The notice obligation — and the notice clock — would still begin running when the employee actually leaves the workplace. The majority’s worries about the precise date that Mr. Mlsna left the workplace are hence misplaced; because it is undisputed that Uni-*1132tel failed to provide notice, timing is hardly an issue in this case. If the exact date of termination is relevant to anything at all, and I seriously doubt that it is on these facts, it is relevant to the cause of termination (i.e. whether Mr. Mlsna left work because he resigned, or because he was fired for gross misconduct). Upholding Judge Zagel here does not, contrary to the majority’s assertion, give an employee an unfettered right “to preempt his employer’s decision to terminate him for gross misconduct.” Instead, it only entrusts trial judges with the duty to determine the cause of termination as a matter of law.
The result reached by the majority promises extended litigation not only in this case, but also in others — all to determine the simple issue whether an innocent spouse is entitled to notice that she must make her own arrangements for health insurance. It is most unlikely that Congress went to the trouble of prescribing independent notice to a spouse, but made that notice dependent upon the sort of technical considerations the majority thinks dispositive.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent as to the matters indicated.

. The majority's approach harkens back to the common law doctrine of coverture, which refused to recognize a married woman’s independent legal existence. "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband." I William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England 430-33 (1765). See also Kermit L. Hall, The Magic Mirror 35-37 (Oxford 1989) (discussing the doctrine of coverture in the colonial American legal-system).

. Judge Zagel does not justify his alternative holding that "Unitel did not terminate Theodore Mlsna for gross misconduct” in these precise terms. 825 F.Supp. at 865. The cause and effect analysis is, however, a plausible reading of both the statute and Judge Zagel’s conclusion.