Court Opinion

ID: 9730131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:02:16.317527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:04.415468
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE STOUDER, specially concurring: I agree with the result reached by my colleagues but only because of the consequences of what I believe to be the unique factual circumstances of this case. As noted in the facts, Cardinal and its insurance carrier Reliance made the workmen’s compensation payments and also substantially participated in the offer of settlement. It seems to me that the failure of the settlement to include a resolution of the workmen’s compensation reimbursement was fatal to the claim thereafter raised in the trial court and in this court. It seems to me that Cardinal can not be both offeror and offeree or claimant with respect to the same settlement proposal since the positions are mutually exclusive and the purported stipulation to the contrary is not entitled to any validity. By joining in the request to have the settlement approved, Cardinal, in effect, authorized the trial court to do exactly what it did, consider the settlement offer as a net settlement ignoring the contradictory limitation asserted by Cardinal. If Cardinal was not an offeror of the settlement my views would be different, because in that event, before the trial court could find that all of the settlement should be attributed to the Scaffold Act violations, it would have to find that the plaintiffs were not entitled to any recovery as a matter of law on the other counts of the complaint, a conclusion which I do not believe is in accord with the facts of this case.