Court Opinion

ID: 9788939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:22:59.52386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:17.864345
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
concurring in result.
The provisions of the Workers' Compensation Act do not authorize the trial tribunal to deny an employee's claim for temporary total disability based on the employer's assertion that the injured person's employment status came to be terminated before the end of his *46healing period. Neither common-law norms nor those of equity are available to supplement, abridge or alter the statute's exclusive provisions that define the outer limit of compensation liability.1 I hence concur in today's conclusion that the trial tribunal's denial of claimant's quest for temporary total disability from on-the-job harm impermissi-bly shortchanged the amount of statutory benefits that were his due.

. See Brooks v. A.A. Davis & Co. et al, 1926 OK 965, 124 Okl. 140, 254 P. 66, 67, whose syllabus states: ''The Workmen's Compensation Law [now the Workers' Compensation Act] ... is in derogation of the common law; and common-law rules cannot be invoked either to enforce or defeat a claim for compensation asserted under the act' (emphasis supplied). Were the court persuaded today to sustain the trial tribunal's order that denies the claimant's quest for the full amount of his healing-period disability, its pronouncement would rightly deserve condemnation for placing the court's imprimatur on an extra-statutory forfeiture of a worker's right to legislatively authorized compensation benefits.