Court Opinion

ID: 9630087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:59:41.031543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:30.621657
License: Public Domain

SADLER, Justice (dissenting). The conclusion announced by the majority in the prevailing opinion offends both reason and justice. In it they either forget, or consciously ignore, the whole philosophy out of which workmen’s compensation as a state policy arose and has so long survived. Gonzales v. Chino Copper Co., 29 N.M. 228, 222 P. 903; Christensen v. Dysart, 42 N.M. 107, 76 P.2d 1. The majority readily employ the measure prescribed by the Act to fix the amount of the workman’s compensation, viz., a specified percentage of his average weekly earnings over a stated period, 1953 Comp. § 59-10-18, in which the wife has an unquestioned community interest. Then, surprisingly, they cast aside this statutory measure for fixing weekly compensation as the decisive factor in determining character of the fund it produces. Since a stated percentage of average weekly earnings 'of the workman over a stated period, in which the wife concededly has a community interest, is made the measure of what the workman is to receive as compensation, it seems only reasonable and fair to assume the fund thus arising as compensation would take on the same character in his hands as that enjoyed by the earnings it replaces. But not so under the false logic followed by the majority! The prevailing opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, compensation is still awarded in New Mexico on the basis of loss of earnings. The supposed change wrought in this connection by L.1945, c. 65, 1953 Comp. § 59-10-25, is the product of imagined legislative intent and, hence, a pure myth. Naturally, a change in disability enters the equation but only as it may affect the earning power. Any change in the compensation brought about by an increase or decrease in percentage of disability is still to be governed by and fixed within the statutory limits as to amount, measured by the average weekly earnings over a stated period. The prevailing opinion is leaning on a slender reed, indeed, when it is rested on this supposed change. The cases the majority cite from Arizona, California and Texas are direct authority against them and are not to be disregarded by reason of any supposed statutory differences. The reasoning the majority employ, destructive as it is of the rights of the wife, fails to invoke my concurrence. Quite the contrary, it compels an abiding and unrelenting dissent on my part.