Court Opinion

ID: 9771171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:35:46.737906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:12.345815
License: Public Domain

BLACKMAR, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that the element of causation was sufficiently demonstrated by the evidence, and so I concur in Part I of the opinion. I dissent from the holding in Part II of the opinion because the Commission departs from the plain meaning of § 287.-250(6), RSMo 1986, reading as follows:
In the case of injured employees who earn either no wage or less than the earnings of adult day laborers in the line of employment in that locality, the yearly wage shall be reckoned according to the average annual earnings of adults of the same class in the same (or if that is impracticable then of neighboring) employment.
The legislature made it clear in this section that an employee who is a volunteer, in the sense that he receives no compensation or nominal compensation, is to receive worker’s compensation benefits not at the statutory minimum rate, or on the basis of the nominal compensation he actually receives, but at a rate determined by the “average annual earnings of adults of the same class.”
The Commission’s misunderstanding of the law shows on the face of its final award in the following two paragraphs:
The employer and insurer offered evidence upon which the Commission can and does rely. Ronald F. Montgomery, Chief of the Seneca Fire Department, which has about fifteen volunteers, testi*370fied on behalf of the employer and insurer. According to this testimony volunteers are paid $3.00 per call for a fire in the city; $5.00 per call for a fire outside of the city; $2.00 for every meeting; and $1.00 for a bunk-out. The employer and insurer offered evidence of the annual earnings of all of the Seneca Fire Department volunteers for 1983. All of these earnings are set forth in the Employer’s Exhibit No. 2.
It is clear that the highest annual earnings of a single volunteer amounted to only $273.00, which if used would entitle the claimant in this case to only the minimum rate of compensation, in effect at the time of the accident, or $16.00 per week. Averaging the annual earnings of all volunteers for the City of Seneca gives the claimant no higher rate.
This holding runs counter to Stegeman v. St. Francis Xavier Parish, 611 S.W.2d 204 (Mo. banc 1981), holding that a volunteer church laborer was to receive compensation at the same level as compensated laborers of the vicinity, and to Eagle v. City of St. James, 669 S.W.2d 36 (Mo.App.1984), holding that auxiliary policemen were to be compensated on the basis of the earnings of regular policemen of the city. The Commission certainly commits grievous legal error in its apparent assumption that the compensation actually paid to volunteers is a material circumstance.
The principal opinion seeks to excuse this departure from the governing law by suggesting that there was some sort of failure of proof on the part of the claimant. The claimant’s able and experienced counsel started by establishing the compensation paid to the only employee of the City of Duenweg whose duties required him to fight fires. The Commission rejected this because he was required to perform other duties and received no additional compensation for his fire fighting. I find this arbitrary because the other duties of city maintenance, reading water meters, and cleaning the streets and drainage ditches are not of any higher order than fire fighting. Counsel acted appropriately in bringing the compensation of the only city employee whose duties required him to fight fires to the attention of the fact finding authority.
Counsel did not rest here. He provided ample information about compensation received by ordinary fire fighters in the nearby city of Joplin. The Commission’s finding and the principal opinion refer to testimony about a figure of $1,300 a month for Joplin firemen. The principal opinion asserts that the witness was “not certain” of this amount. The Commission did not say that it rejected this figure because of uncertainty. It did not say why it rejected the figure. It also overlooked the same witness’s testimony at the prior hearing that Joplin firemen received $1,170 per month in 1982 and 8% less, computed at $1,076, in July of 1980, when the compensa-ble injury occurred. There seems to be no real dispute about these figures.
The Commission could at least fall back on the federal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour or $581 per month, which it and we judicially know. To award compensation on this basis would better serve the purpose of the statute than does the approach the Commission and the Court take.
What it comes down to is that there was evidence in the record from which the Commission could have determined an award in conformity with the mandate of the statute, and the Commission erroneously determined that the appropriate standard was that relating to the payment of volunteers. This is not a simple finding of failure of proof. Neither the Commission nor the Court has a realistic suggestion as to what other kind of proof could be made.
I would endorse the following statement from the dissenting opinion of Commissioner Herbert L. Ford:
Although there is no case directly on point, I find the cases construing Section 287.250(6) do not preclude the use of the average annual earnings of paid, full-time workers in the same or neighboring employments. See Stegeman v. St. Francis Xavier Parish, 611 S.W.2d 204, 209-210 (Mo. banc 1981). Nothing in that opinion suggests that the uncompensated, volunteer laborer for the parish was not to be compensated on the basis *371of the earnings of paid, regular workers on the construction crew. In Eagle v. City of St James, 669 S.W.2d 36, 41 [11] (Mo.App.1984) the Court of Appeals affirmed the rate of compensation for an unpaid, auxiliary police officer, which was based upon the findings of the Commission that police officers regularly employed by the city were paid $500.00 per month, or $6,000.00 per year. The Court cited Stegeman, supra, as authority in upholding this application of Section 287.-250(6). The Commission in Eagle, supra, did not compare the claimant to auxiliary police officers in other places who may have been compensated per call or meeting. Nor was Eagle’s compensation rate based only upon the “theoretical” payment of $1.00 per month to each officer on the auxiliary force, amounts which actually were placed in a fund to purchase uniforms, 669 S.W.2d at 40. Eagle was compensated for his injury as though he were a salaried police officer. The claimant in this case should be treated this way by affirming the award of the administrative law judge.
By this Court’s opinion the claimant is apparently told that substantial compensation is authorized but that no means of proof is available. The scene reminds one of Alice in Wonderland. Compensation paid by the City of Duenweg is rejected because the employee was not a full-time fire fighter and compensation paid full-time fire fighters in neighboring cities was rejected because they worked in a larger city. I do not believe that this is what the legislature had in mind.
Unless the Court intends to overrule Stegeman, its stubborn refusal to remand the case to the Commission is difficult to understand. The Commission considered the compensation of virtual volunteers whose compensation was nominal. Stege-man says that it should not give these cases any weight, but should consider only the rate of pay of the most comparable wholly paid employees. Only the Commission can tell us what it would do if properly instructed on the law. The principal opinion joins the Commission in ignoring the dictate that the worker’s compensation law be “liberally construed with a view to the public welfare.” The decision can only confuse lawyers, judges, administrators and volunteer firemen.