Court Opinion

ID: 9763017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:35:19.782797+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:38.859818
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
While I join the majority Opinion, disquiet compels this expression. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has made abundantly clear that the statutory declaration of the exclusivity provisions set forth in the Workmen’s Compensation Act1 precludes the presentation of any claim by an employee against the employer beyond the remedy afforded the employee by the Act. That Court has further decided that the exclusivity provision precludes the presentation of a common law tort claim by the employee against the employer even when the injury to the employee is caused by a deliberate and wanton disregard of the employer for the safety of its employees. Poyser v. Neuman and Co., Inc., 514 Pa. 32, 522 A.2d *195548 (1987). The Act itself extended the immunity and exclusivity benefits enjoyed by the employer to the employer’s workmen’s compensation insurance carrier.2 It remained for the Supreme Court, however, to confer upon the workmen’s compensation insurance carrier immunity from tort liability even though the insurer was alleged to have engaged in fraud and deceit so as to deprive the injured employee of his workers’ compensation benefits. Kuney v. PMA Insurance Co., 525 Pa. 171, 578 A.2d 1285 (1990). And, most recently the Supreme Court extended the immunity of the employer and of the employer’s insurance carrier to parties who serve the interest of the insurance carrier when the employer and its carrier are confronted with a claim under the Act. Alston v. St. Paul Insurance Companies, et al., 531 Pa. 261, 612 A.2d 421 (1992).
The economic disparity between the employer and the employee in the form, inter alia, of availability of resources and immediacy of need — colloquially described as “the employer has the hammer” — was a basic consideration of the legislature when it designed the workmen’s compensation law. As a result, the legislature proceeded on the one hand to relieve an employee of the need to prove fault, and, on the other hand, to restrict the remedies of the employee against the employer and to limit the recovery from the employer. The legislature thereby effected what it viewed as an equitable adjustment of the disparate economic positions of the employer and the employee.
As a result of judicial decision, the following principle has been impressed upon the workmen’s compensation law as enacted by the legislature:
The employer and the compensation carrier of the employer and the agents or representatives of the carrier are immune from tort liability to an employee however flagrant and willful their behavior in causing the injury or in handling the claim for compensation.
However readily one might reject as Molly Maguire rhetoric the cry that the decisions confer upon the employer the license *196of oppressor, and while one would deny with dispatch the claim that the employer has been awarded a permit for flagrant and willful mistreatment3, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that the decisions go far beyond mere adjustment of the economically disparate positions of the employer and employee. Thus it is that I echo the call in Alston of the eminent Justice Ralph J. Cappy for corrective legislation because of his concern that this “well-intentioned interpretation may lead not only to absurdity but also to injustice”.

. 77 P.S. § 481(a).

. 77 p.s. § 501.

. The sanctions provided by the Act are arguably rather meager penalties for flagrant and willful misbehavior by the employer or the carrier.