Court Opinion

ID: 9568389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:03:07.458779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:42.199180
License: Public Domain

Weaver, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur with the majority holding that the Second Injury Fund is only liable under § 372, the apportionment provision of the Worker’s Disability Compensation Act, “if the employee experiences wage loss from employment other than that in which the injury occurs, and that employment contributed more than one-fifth of the employee’s average weekly wage.” Ante at 126-127. Section 372 is simply not triggered if there is nothing to apportion.
However, I dissent because I believe that it is not necessary to remand this case. The magistrate found that the plaintiff’s injury rendered her compensably disabled from one employment but not compensably disabled from her concurrent employment. The magistrate correctly concluded that plaintiff was partially disabled because she retained a wage-earning capacity in work suitable to her qualifications and training. Further, the wcab agreed with these findings and conclusion.1 I believe that the majority’s decision to remand is functionally equivalent to a reversal of the finding of partial disability because it ignores both the *130magistrate’s and the wcab’s findings that the plaintiff retained a wage-earning capacity.
The magistrate already explored the “complex of fact issues” that informs the analysis of “wage earning capacity.” The majority’s attempt to cleave the concept of “wage earning capacity” from the concept of “disability,” ante at 120-121, undermines the legislature’s unmistakable intent to define compensability by a marriage of those very concepts: “ ‘disability’ means a limitation of an employee’s wage earning capacity in work suitable to his or her qualifications and training resulting from a personal injury or work related disease.” MCL 418.301(4); MSA 17.237(301)(4). See Michales v Morton Salt Co, 450 Mich 479, 490; 538 NW2d 1 (1995). While it is true and very regrettable that this plaintiff’s activities are “severely limited,” ante at 124, this fact does not force reconsideration of the magistrate’s conclusion that this plaintiff retained a wage-earning capacity at sedentary employment.
Furthermore, including wages from “all employment” in the definition of average weekly wage under § 371(1) did not change the basic definition of compensable disability. The addition of “all employment” in 1982 was intended to address the inequity of prior case law, as discussed by the majority opinion. Ante at 123. Prior case law did not consider wages earned at a second job even when the injury affected the employee’s wage-earning capacity at the second job.2 *131The addition of the “all employment” resolved that very specific problem.3
In this case, the magistrate found that the plaintiff is not compensably disabled from sedentary employment. In other words, she retains a wage-earning capacity in work suitable to her qualifications and training: she is still fully able to earn wages at a similar sedentary job. It is also clear that the subsequent loss of the sedentary job was unrelated to plaintiffs compensable disability. It is fundamentally inconsistent with Michigan’s wage-loss system to compensate an employee when the subsequent loss of a second job is in no way related to her compensable disability and when she retains a wage-earning capacity for other work comparable to the second job.
Whether the eventual closing of the drive-in was inevitable is not relevant to the determination of the employee’s earning capacity and, further, it is not the purpose of the Michigan Worker’s Disability Compensation Act to serve as another form of unemployment insurance.
I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and reinstate the decision of the magistrate as modified by the wcab and to the extent that it is consistent with this opinion.
Riley, J., concurred with Weaver, J.

 See, e.g., Buehler v Univ of Michigan, 277 Mich 648; 270 NW 171 (1936).

 The legislative analysis makes clear that the “average weekly wage will be calculated as the weekly wage earned by the employee in all employments at the time of the injury and will include overtime pay, premium pay, and cost-of-living adjustments but will not include fringe or other benefits which continue to be received by the employee during a disability.” Senate Analysis Section, SB 1044 (Second Analysis), January 7, 1981. The list of exclusions does not address the status of earnings from concurrent employment not affected by the disability.