Court Opinion

ID: 9531544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:12:49.520893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:30.606010
License: Public Domain

Justice SCOTT
dissenting:
The majority holds that “for purposes of the benefits provided employers by section 8-42-110(3), [3B C.R.S. (1990 Supp.),] the relevant rate of pay is the amount paid by the reemploying employer to the injured employee prior to the injury, without regard to income from other employment previously enjoyed by the employee.” Op. at 263-264. Because such an interpretation of our state workers’ compensation law unfairly reduces the disability compensation payments otherwise paid to workers and unduly favors employers, I respectfully dissent.
I
The legal issue before the court is whether under section 8-42-110(3)1 an employer may reduce its liability for disability payments when the employer rehires the worker at a salary that is less than the employee’s pre-injury wages from former employment. The majority would deny full disability benefits to the worker and, at the same time, reduce employer liability for disability payments so as to not “penalize employers.” Op. at 263. This result, granting the employer reduced liability without conferring a corresponding benefit to employees in return, is contrary to both the letter and spirit of our Workers’ Compensation Act.2
Our workers’ compensation laws are intended to compensate for the loss of wage-earning capacity due to a work-related injury. In cases arising under pre-1990 provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act, we expressly recognized that the Act should be construed liberally to accomplish its benevolent and full remedial purposes of protecting employees who sustain work-related injuries. See, e.g., Bellindir v. Kezer, 648 P.2d 645, 647 (Colo.1982); Claimants Death of Garner v. Vanadium Corp., 194 Colo. 358, 360, 572 P.2d 1205, 1206-07 (1977); Frohlick Crane Serv., Inc. v. Mack, 182 Colo. 34, 38, 510 P.2d 891, 893 (1973); James v. Irrigation Motor & Pump Co., Inc., 180 Colo. 195, 199, 503 P.2d 1025, 1028 (1972). Thus it is clear *265that the Workers’ Compensation Act, effective at the time of Embree’s injury, was primarily designed so that employee benefits would be based on compensation bearing a fair approximation to the employee’s proven and real earning capacity. I believe the majority holding is in direct contravention of this objective.
II
Apart from my view that the majority has overlooked the fundamental purpose of the Workers’ Compensation Act, I also find the majority’s reliance on Fulton v. King Soopers, 823 P.2d 709 (Colo.1992) misplaced. In Fulton, we noted that section 8-42-110(3) benefits employers by limiting their liability for compensation awards and by containing the costs inherent in training new or inexperienced employees; continuing, we stated that that section also benefits employees who, because they have incurred a permanent partial disability, may be confronted with restrictions in their future employment opportunities. Fulton 823 P.2d at 715. Thus we indicated that there is a kind of “quid pro quo” allure to section 8-42-110(3) that encourages employers to comply with the criteria set out in the statute so that employers and employees alike may benefit.
As noted by the majority, see op. at 262, we observed in Fulton that the incentive to the employer to reemploy disabled workers would become hollow, however, if the requirements of the liability limitation statute were triggered by some force remote from the employer’s decision, upon reemployment, to compensate the employee at the employee’s full pre-injury rate of pay. Id. Thus in Fulton, because the employer was unable to “control” the union’s refusal to advance the employee from apprentice to journeyman mechanic after the employee was injured, we concluded that an interpretation of section 8-42-110(3) that includes union classification upgrades as part of the “usual wage adjustments” language under that statute would undermine the employer’s ability to control costs. Based on this reasoning, we held that in accordance with the legislative purpose of section 8-42-110(3), “usual wage adjustments” do not include expected union job classification upgrades. Fulton 823 P.2d at 715.
The majority now reads Fulton, incorrectly I think, to say that we must consider the forces outside the employer’s control to see if those forces might in some way exempt the employer from complying with the express conditions of the liability limitation provision. In contrast, I read Fulton to require the employer to pay the maximum amount payable to the employee, i.e., to fully compensate the employee before the statutory benefits to the employer attach. I would thus limit any exception to this principle to a case like Fulton, wherein the employer is the sole source of the “employee’s pre-injury rate of pay.” Unlike the employer in Fulton, in the instant case, Snyder Oil was not Embree’s sole source of previous compensation.
Next, I am unable to reconcile the majority’s concern that the employer might be “penalize[d],” unless it holds as it does. Op. at 263. Were section 8-42-110(3) not available to an employer, the employer would be required to compensate the disabled worker through a full permanent partial disability award based on all pre-injury compensation. Section 8-42-110(3) merely allows the employer to compensate the employee with a more limited medical impairment payment when the worker is reemployed by the employer, and as a consequence, is made whole because his total compensation is equal to his pre-injury rate of pay. As such, that provision provides the employer with an alternative to paying the employee a permanent partial disability award, i.e., under section 8-42-110(3), the employer is only obligated to pay limited medical impairment benefits when the employer rehires the employee at the pre-injury rate of pay. Thus section 8-42-110(3) changes the form of the employee disability benefit but not its nature, i.e., full and fair compensation to the individual viewed as a whole worker.
Ill
Put simply, the equitable result intended by section 8-42-110(3) is that the employee *266be fairly compensated. In this case, the AU found that, as a result of injuries sustained during his employ at Snyder Oil, Embree was no longer able to perform the work he had been engaged in for over twenty years, i.e., dairy farming.3 He was, however, generally able to continue working at Snyder Oil as he had prior to incurring the work-related injury. Thus, under the majority’s holding, Snyder Oil is able to benefit from Embree’s experience and training, and at the same time to limit its workers' compensation liability. That is, by permitting Snyder Oil to take advantage of the statutory liability limitation, the majority in effect allows Snyder to fully enjoy the intended statutory benefits of the provision, but at the expense of Frank Em-bree, one of its workers, whose work-related injuries now prevent him from working at his dairy farm, and from earning wages at the same level as he had prior to sustaining the disability.4
IV
I believe the correct interpretation of section 8-42-110(3), consistent with the objectives which underlie the workers’ compensation laws and one that comports with the spirit of the statutory scheme, would be to limit its application to those workers who are employed by only one employer or who receive total compensation after injury equivalent to their pre-injury rate of pay. In this way, the disabled employee would be fully compensated either through the receipt of comprehensive disability compensation benefits, or through the identical income received prior to his or her injury.
As a final thought, I wish to add that under the majority opinion, the efforts of men and women who must take on additional work in the course of providing for their own are now disregarded whenever an injured worker is reemployed at a salary which does not fairly represent his or her proven pre-injury capacity. Because I cannot accept that the General Assembly intended such a result in enacting section 8-42-110(3), I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to say that Justice LOHR and Justice MULLARKEY join in this dissent.

. The relevant language of section 8-42-110(3) provides that in
any case where an employer reemploys or continues the disabled employee at work in the employment of the employer at the employee's pre-injury rate of pay and extends to the employee the usual wage adjustments, the employee's permanent partial disability awards shall be limited to permanent medical impairment or a payment under section 8-42-107, which ever is less.

. The purpose of workers’ compensation statutes is to provide an equitable recovery to employees when they sustain a work-related injury; the employee acquires a benefit, but also relinquishes his or her right to sue the employer for damages for the injury. Similarly, when an employer, pursuant to § 8-42-110(3), reemploys the employee at his or her pre-injury rate of pay following a work-related injury, the same principle is at work, i.e., the employee is in effect relinquishing the right to sue his or her employer for full disability compensation. See generally United States v. Demko, 385 U.S. 149, 151, 87 S.Ct. 382, 383, 17 L.Ed.2d 258 (1966) (“Historically, workmen’s compensation statutes were the offspring of a desire to give injured workers a quicker and more certain recovery than can be obtained from tort suits based on negligence and subject to common-law defenses to such suits. Thus compensation laws are practically always thought of as substitutes for, not supplements to, common-law tort actions.’’); see also A. Larson, The Law of Workmen's Compensation §§ 1.00-5.30, at 1-1 through 2-25 (1993) (describing the character, origin and purposes of workers’ compensation law); A. Larson, The Nature and Origins of Workmen’s Compensation, 37 Cornell L.Q. 206 (1952) (”[T]he employee and his dependents, in exchange for ... modest but assured benefits, give up their common-law right to sue the employer for damages for any injury covered by the [workers' compensation] act."). Thus the very nature of our workers’ compensation law is an accommodation between the conflicting interests of employers and their employees.

. Annual income from Embree’s dairy farm amounted to approximately |2,000 which comprised almost twenty percent of his pre-injury compensation.

. The record is uncontroverted that Embree, employed five days a week, eight hours a day as a pumper, was able to return to work at Snyder Oil with no limitations; however, because his self-employment as a farmer involved shoveling and heavy lifting, he was unable to return to his prior, self-employed farming.