In the Matter of the Compensation of Royce L. Brown, Sr., Claimant. Jesse BROWN, Personal Representative of the Estate of Royce L. Brown, Sr., Petitioner, Respondent on Review, v. SAIF CORPORATION and Harris Transportation Company, LLC, Petitioners on Review.
WCB No. 11-02146; CA A151889; SC S062420
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
March 30, 2017
361 Or 241
Argued and submitted May 11, 2015.
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted May 11, 2015.
Julie Masters, Appellate Counsel, SAIF Corporation, Salem, argued the cause and filed the briefs for petitioners on review.
Julene M. Quinn, Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review.
Jerald P. Keene, Oregon Workers’ Compensation Institute, LLC, Oceanside, filed the brief for amici curiae Associated Oregon Industries and Oregon Self Insurers Association.
Before Balmer, Chief Justice, and Kistler, Walters, Landau, Baldwin, and Brewer, Justices.**
LANDAU, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The final order of the Workers’ Compensation Board is affirmed.
Case Summary:
Claimant, who sustained an on the job injury to his back, filed a workers’ compensation claim, and SAIF accepted a claim for lumbar strain, combined with claimant‘s preexisting lumbar disc disease and related conditions. SAIF later denied the claim on the ground that the lumbar strain had ceased to be the major contributing cause of claimant‘s combined condition. Claimant challenged the denial, arguing that the compensable condition was not just the condition that SAIF had previously accepted, but included other, nonaccepted conditions that might have resulted from the work-related accident.
Held: Under
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The final order of the Workers’ Compensation Board is affirmed.
LANDAU, J.
The issue in this workers’ compensation case is whether claimant is entitled to benefits for his “combined condition” claim. Under
The Workers’ Compensation Board rejected claimant‘s argument and upheld SAIF‘s denial of claimant‘s combined condition claim, concluding that existing precedent defined the “otherwise compensable injury” component of combined conditions to consist of the condition or conditions that the employer has accepted as compensable. The Court of Appeals reversed, acknowledging that its holding was “potentially at odds” with existing precedents from both that court and this one. Brown v. SAIF, 262 Or App 640, 653, 325 P3d 834 (2014). It nevertheless concluded that those precedents were either distinguishable or should be reconsidered. Id. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the Court of Appeals erred and that the Workers’ Compensation Board was correct.
I. FACTS
The relevant facts are not in dispute. Claimant had a history of back problems dating back to 1993, when he was first treated for back problems. He started work for employer as a truck driver in 2002. That same year, he slipped and fell on his buttocks in a restaurant bathroom. A lumbar spine X-ray taken shortly after showed degenerative changes.
In 2006, claimant went to a hospital emergency room complaining of back pain over the preceding month. He was referred to an orthopedist, Dr. Matthew Gambee, who ordered an MRI. The MRI revealed an L4-5 disc protrusion with compression of the L4 nerve root, along with a number of degenerative changes. Dr. Gambee performed an epidural steroid injection, but that provided no sustained relief.
Claimant was referred to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Hoang N. Le, who performed surgery that included a right-side L4-5 decompression, discectomy, and transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion. In April 2007, claimant reported having no back or leg pain, and he was released to full duty. Over the course of
On December 14, 2008, while hanging heavy truck-tire chains under his truck, claimant felt a sudden burning with sharp pain in his lower back that radiated into his right leg. The next day, he went to a hospital emergency room with the same complaints. The treating doctor ordered X-rays of claimant‘s back, which showed no evidence of acute bone or joint abnormality. So the doctor placed him on modified duty restrictions and prescribed pain medications.
Several days later, claimant saw Dr. Susan Davis, who diagnosed a lumbar strain secondary to the December 14, 2008, work injury. She placed claimant on light duty restriction, prescribed conservative treatment, and referred claimant to physical therapy. Claimant submitted a workers’ compensation claim for his lower back pain. SAIF accepted a claim for a disabling “lumbar strain.” The notice of acceptance included a notice that, should claimant‘s condition worsen, he could be entitled to additional benefits for an aggravation claim.
Claimant continued to feel pain in his right hip and down his right leg. Dr. Davis ordered a CT scan of the lumbar spine, which revealed L4-5 right marked foraminal stenosis related to spondylolisthesis and spurring. Dr. Davis referred claimant to an occupational medicine specialist, Dr. Fernando Proano, who referred claimant back to Dr. Le for a neurosurgical consultation.
Meanwhile, Dr. Proano examined claimant in June 2009. He diagnosed a lumbar strain combined with preexisting lumbar disc disease and noted that claimant‘s work accident had aggravated the preexisting conditions. Dr. Proano again examined claimant in August 2009. He reported that, at that point, claimant‘s lumbar strain had reached medically stationary status with no impairment findings due to the strain. Based on Dr. Proano‘s report, SAIF issued a notice of closure that closed the claim for lumbar strain and awarded no permanent disability benefits for the accepted lumbar strain.
Claimant continued to experience pain and returned to Dr. Le, who then performed a “right L4-5 instrumentation removal and redo decompression of the L4 nerve root.” But claimant experienced no significant relief from the surgery.
In January 2010, claimant filed a combined condition claim for “lumbar strain combined with lumbar disc disease and spondylolisthesis.” SAIF initially resisted, but, after some litigation, it accepted the combined condition claim, specifying that it was accepting, in addition to the originally accepted lumbar strain, a combined condition consisting of “lumbar strain combined with preexisting lumbar disc disease and spondylolisthesis.”
Approximately two months later, SAIF ordered an independent medical examination by Dr. Edmund Frank. He opined that the lumbar strain combined with the lumbar disc disease and spondylolisthesis had resolved and that the work-related lumbar strain had ceased to be the major contributing cause of claimant‘s disability and need for treatment. Dr. Frank concluded that claimant‘s symptoms related to right L5 radiculopathy secondary to the preexisting spondylolisthesis at L4-5, the fusion-related pseudoarthritis at L4-5, and the scarring of the nerve root, all of which were unrelated to claimant‘s work-related lumbar strain. SAIF then issued a denial of claimant‘s combined condition claim as of the date that his lumbar strain had become medically stationary, on the ground that, at that point, the accepted lumbar strain had ceased to be the major contributing cause of claimant‘s combined condition.
Claimant requested a hearing on the denial of the combined condition claim. At the hearing, SAIF offered the testimony of Dr. Proano that the accepted lumbar strain had ceased to be the major contributing cause of claimant‘s combined condition. Claimant did not challenge that evidence. Instead, he argued that the original December 14, 2008, work injury resulted not only in lumbar strain, but also in worsening his preexisting conditions. In claimant‘s view, the combined condition claim includes not only the accepted lumbar strain, but the worsening of the preexisting conditions as well. Both the lumbar
The administrative law judge rejected claimant‘s argument and upheld SAIF‘s denial. The ALJ noted claimant‘s argument that the December 14, 2008, work injury had worsened his preexisting conditions, but concluded that the argument was beside the point, as claimant had not filed a claim for such worsening. The ALJ noted that claimant‘s combined condition claim was for the accepted lumbar strain and the preexisting conditions only. Under the circumstances, the ALJ concluded, the “otherwise compensable injury” is “limited to the lumbar strain.”
Claimant sought review by the Workers’ Compensation Board, which adopted and affirmed the ALJ‘s order with the added observation that the denial of claimant‘s combined condition claim was compelled by its own case law, as well as case law from the Court of Appeals. Board Member Weddell concurred, writing separately to explain that, although the Board‘s decision was indeed compelled by existing precedent, in her view that precedent should be reexamined. Weddell asserted that the existing precedent was contradicted by several cited excerpts from the legislative history of the 1990 and 1995 amendments that are reflected in current workers’ compensation statutes. She also observed that the existing precedent has the potential to leave claimants without remedies in certain circumstances.
The Court of Appeals took up the concurrence‘s suggestion and reversed the Board. The court concluded that
In reaching the conclusion that the “otherwise compensable injury” component of a combined condition claim is not limited to accepted conditions, the Court of Appeals said, “[w]e recognize that our conclusion is potentially at odds with what we and the Supreme Court have said” in other cases. Id. at 653. The court nevertheless suggested that those contrary statements are better viewed as dicta or as inadequately considered without benefit of the legislative history on which it now relied. Id. In the end, the court reversed and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of its broader reading of the nature of the “otherwise compensable injury” to include other medical conditions related to the “injury incident,” such as the worsening of preexisting conditions, but which were not within the scope of the work-related conditions that SAIF accepted. Id. at 656.
We allowed review to address the proper interpretation of
II. ANALYSIS
On review, SAIF argues that the Court of Appeals has significantly misconstrued the requirements of
For his part, claimant argues that the Court of Appeals was essentially correct in construing the “otherwise compensable injury” as “the work accident and all of the effects that flow from it,” not a particular medical condition. Claimant‘s argument rests on the assertion that the relevant statutes “do[] not expressly (or impliedly) include the requirement of a ‘condition.‘” Rather, he says, they refer to a compensable “injury,” which can be understood to apply to an on-the-job incident that results in a medical condition. Claimant urges us to give special attention to the legislative history of the 1990 and 1995 amendments to the statutes, as did the Court of Appeals. In claimant‘s view, that history reveals that the legislature did not intend the acceptance of a claim to have any sort of limiting effect on a claimant‘s rights.
We are thus confronted with an issue of statutory construction. We resolve that issue in accordance with the rules of interpretation described in PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610-12, 859 P2d 1143 (1993), and State v. Gaines, 346 Or 160, 171-73, 206 P3d 1042 (2009). Among those that guide our construction of the statutes at issue in this case is the essential principle that the best evidence of what the legislature intended a statute to mean is the wording of the statute that it adopted into law. As this court explained in Gaines,
“[o]nly the text of a statute receives the consideration and approval of a majority of the members of the legislature, as required to have the effect of law.
Or Const, Art IV, § 25 . The formal requirements of lawmaking produce the best source from which to discern the legislature‘s intent, for it is not the intent of the individual legislators that governs, but the intent of the legislature as formally enacted into law[.]”
346 Or at 171. With that in mind, we turn to the statutes at issue in this case.
A. Statutory background
We begin with some background for context. Under Oregon‘s workers’ compensation law, employers are required to provide compensation to workers who suffer “compensable injuries.”
“an accidental injury, or accidental injury to prosthetic appliances, arising out of and in the course of employment requiring medical services or resulting in disability or death; an injury is accidental if the result is an accident, whether or not due to an accidental means, if it is established by medical evidence supported by objective findings[.]”
A worker who has suffered a compensable injury must file a “[n]otice of an accident resulting in an injury or death” immediately
Ordinarily, it is the claimant‘s burden to establish that a particular injury is compensable.
The first such exception is triggered if an “otherwise compensable injury“—that is, an injury that would otherwise be compensable but for the exception—combines with a preexisting condition to create what is known as a “combined condition“:
“If an otherwise compensable injury combines at any time with a preexisting condition to cause or prolong disability or a need for treatment, the combined condition is compensable only if, so long as and to the extent that the otherwise compensable injury is the major contributing cause of the disability of the combined condition or the major contributing cause of the need for treatment of the combined condition.”
If an employer accepts a combined condition claim, that acceptance does not preclude the employer from later denying the claim, should circumstances change so that the otherwise compensable condition is no longer the major contributing cause of the combined condition.
“Once a worker‘s claim has been accepted, the insurer or self-insured employer must issue a written denial to the worker when the accepted injury is no longer the major contributing cause of the worker‘s combined condition before the claim may be closed.”
The second exception to the ordinary burden of persuasion applies in “consequential condition” cases:
“No injury or disease is compensable as a consequence of a compensable injury unless the compensable injury is the major contributing cause of the consequential condition.”
Workers’ compensation benefits may include medical services. For an ordinary compensable injury, the claimant is entitled to compensation for medical services for conditions
One final bit of statutory context deserves mention. If a claimant‘s compensable injury becomes “medically stationary,” the employer is authorized to close the claim and, if appropriate, award permanent disability.
B. Analysis of parties’ contentions
With the benefit of that context, we turn to the parties’ arguments. The principal issue concerns the meaning of the “otherwise compensable injury” component of a combined condition claim. SAIF takes the position that, in this context, the “otherwise compensable injury” refers to the medical condition that an employer or insurer has previously accepted. Claimant argues that nothing in the wording of
Both parties contend that their arguments are supported by the “plain text” of the statute. In that respect, both parties are mistaken. There is little that is “plain” about this state‘s workers’ compensation statutes, certainly with respect to the terminology at issue in this case. In fact, there appears to be a tendency on the part of the legislature to use a number of different terms in not altogether consistent fashion, sometimes treating them as essentially synonymous and at other times treating them as signifying different things.
Examples are legion.
Compounding those ambiguities is the fact that some of the terms themselves are reasonably capable of more than one meaning. The term “injury,” for example, plausibly may refer either to an event or to a resulting condition. Webster‘s defines the noun both as “an act that damages, harms, or hurts” and as the “hurt, damage, or loss sustained.” Webster‘s Third New Int‘l Dictionary 1164 (unabridged ed 2002).2 In other words, an
Under the circumstances, the resolution of the dispute in this case will not turn on whether an interpretation of one provision is inconsistent with another in the workers’ compensation statutes. Regardless of what we say about the statutes at issue in this case, doubtless at least one provision could be cited that arguably contradicts that interpretation in one way or another. That is so whether we adopt the construction advanced by SAIF, or by claimant, or by any of the amici curiae that have proposed their own interpretations to the court. So we turn instead to the relevant statutes in context to determine the interpretation that best fits the statutory scheme as a whole. See Lane County v. LCDC, 325 Or 569, 578, 942 P2d 278 (1997) (“[W]e do not look at one subsection of a statute in a vacuum; rather, we construe each part together with the other parts in an attempt to produce a harmonious whole.“).
1. Meaning of “injury”
We begin with the statutory word “injury,” which claimant contends refers to a work “accident.” We address the meaning of the term as used in
a. Textual analysis
As we have noted, the term “injury” plausibly may refer either to an event or to a resulting condition. But, as this case so well illustrates, dictionaries do not necessarily supply the meaning of statutory terms. They supply reasonably possible meanings. Which of those reasonably possible meanings is the one that the legislature most likely intended is determined by how the terms are actually used in the relevant statutes. See State v. Cloutier, 351 Or 68, 96, 261 P3d 1234 (2011) (“Dictionaries, after all, do not tell us what words mean, only what words can mean, depending on their context and the particular manner in which they are used.” (Emphasis in original.)). In that sense, dictionaries suggest what the legislature could have meant by the terms it enacted. In this case, the way that the term “otherwise compensable injury” is used in the relevant provisions of the workers’ compensation statutes strongly suggests that, in this context, it refers to a particular medical condition—specifically, the one that the employer accepted as compensable.
The use of the term “injury” in
Second, as we just noted, the same statute sets out the elements of a consequential condition claim and expressly equates an “injury or disease” with a “condition,” not an event.
Third, the same statute defines a “compensable injury” as “an accidental injury, or accidental injury to prosthetic appliances.”
Fourth,
Finally,
That a compensable “injury” and the accident that may have caused it are separate things is further suggested by
That a compensable “injury” refers to a particular medical condition, and not an accidental incident, is also confirmed by the statutory distinction between an accidental “injury” within the meaning of
b. Historical context and prior construction
Further supporting the distinction between the terms is the historical context, which includes earlier versions of the statute and judicial construction of them. See Kohring v. Ballard, 355 Or 297, 307-09, 325 P3d 717 (2014) (examining earlier versions of statute and judicial construction of those versions as statutory context). The reference to a compensable “injury” is a term that traces far back in the history of the state‘s workers’ compensation law. The original 1913 statute required any workers’ compensation claim to be filed within one year after the date a compensable “injury” occurred. General Laws of Oregon 1913, ch 112, § 27(d). It was later amended to provide that claims must be filed within three months of the date the “accident” occurred, provided that the State Industrial Accident Commission was given discretion to permit a filing within one year of the time the “accident” occurred. General Laws of Oregon 1935, ch 139, § (1)(e).
In Landauer v. State Ind. Acc. Com., 175 Or 418, 154 P2d 189 (1944), a worker in a poultry farm attempted to dress an apparently “moribund turkey” when the turkey kicked her in the breast. Seven months later, a lump formed in the area where she had been kicked by the turkey. At that point, she filed a workers’ compensation claim for breast cancer. The commission denied the claim as untimely, having been filed more than three months from the date of the accident. The claimant appealed and argued to this court that the statutory reference to “accident” referred to a “compensable injury.” She argued that the “compensable injury” in her case consisted of the breast cancer, which did not appear until shortly before the filing of her claim, well within the three-month time limit. Id. 175 Or at 422-23.
This court rejected the claimant‘s argument that the terms “accident” and “compensable injury” are synonymous. The court extensively reviewed case law from other jurisdictions on the point, examining the statutes and case law from 20 different states with statutes comparable to Oregon‘s. The court concluded that the weight of authority—all but one state court—held that the terms have distinct meaning. Quoting approvingly from an Indiana appeals court decision, the court explained that, “‘[t]he word “injury” in this section means the compensable disability and does not refer to the date of the accident from which the “injury” or compensable disability resulted.‘” Id. at 427 (quoting Farmers Mut. Liability Co. v. Chaplin, 114 Ind App 372, 380, 51 NE2d 378 (1943)).5 Thus, the distinction between
Claimant and amicus curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA) object that we cannot read the words “injury” and “condition” to mean the same thing for essentially four reasons. None of those contentions is availing.
First, claimant and OTLA argue that interpreting the two words synonymously violates the rule of construction that requires different words to be given different meanings. See, e.g., Dept. of Transportation v. Stallcup, 341 Or 93, 101, 138 P3d 9 (2006) (use of different terms in real estate appraisal statute suggests that each was intended to have different meaning). As we explained in State v. Lane, 357 Or 619, 629, 355 P3d 914 (2015), however, the fact that the legislature has used different terms “does not, by itself, require the terms to have different meanings.” Rather, “[s]uch ‘rules’ of interpretation are mere assumptions that always give way to more direct evidence of legislative intent.” Id.6
In this case, there is such direct evidence of legislative intent. The relevant statutes themselves treat the terms “injury” and “condition” as synonymous. Thus, for example,
“[w]hen the claim is closed because the accepted injury is no longer the major contributing cause of the worker‘s combined or consequential condition or conditions, and there is sufficient information to determine permanent disability, the likely permanent disability that would have been due to the current accepted condition shall be estimated.”
The statutes thus explicitly equate the term accepted “injury” with accepted “condition.” Were claimant correct that an accepted “injury” is distinct from an accepted “condition” in this context, we would be required to conclude that the word “injury” has two different meanings within the same section of the statute. Even accepting the fact that there is some slippage in terminology within the workers’ compensation statutes generally, we find it highly unlikely that the legislature would have intended a word to mean one thing in one sentence but another thing in the next sentence of the very same subsection. See Burke v. DLCD, 352 Or 428,1 440, 290 P3d 790 (2012) (unlikely that legislature uses the same term in the same sentence to mean different things).
Second, claimant and OTLA argue that treating the words “injury” and “condition” as essentially synonymous undermines a basic sequence of events evident in several provisions of the workers’ compensation statutes; namely, that injuries cause conditions. They point to statutes such as
The initial problem with that argument is that, as we have just noted, statutes such as
Third, claimant and OTLA argue that conflating the terms “injury” and “condition” confuses legal and medical causation. They contend that compensability of an “injury” is a legal question, referring to “an event in the course and scope of work,” while compensability of a particular “condition” is a medical one, determined by reference to medical evidence. As we noted earlier, however,
Finally, OTLA argues that two other statutes use the words “injury” and “condition” clearly to mean different things. One such statute is
In any event, there is nothing especially anomalous about one medical condition “involving” another. A medical diagnosis of “arthritis,” for instance, can “involve” subsidiary medical conditions such as “inflammatory process or a degenerative condition of a soft tissue interface between two movable bones.” Hopkins, 349 Or at 353; see also Hutchings v. Amerigas Propane, 275 Or App 579, 584, 365 P3d 636 (2015), rev den, 335 Or 833 (2016) (medical diagnosis of “cervical strain” can “involve” other medical conditions, including spondylosis of the cervical spine and damage to the long tracks of the cervical cord). OTLA offers no explanation for its assertion to the contrary.
The other statute that OTLA cites is
c. Legislative history
Claimant argues that reading the workers’ compensation statutes to equate the “injury” component of the statutory term “otherwise compensable injury” in
d. 1990 amendments: Statement of Jerry Keene
The Court of Appeals first cited remarks of Jerry Keene, a nonlegislator witness, who spoke in favor of the 1990 special-session legislation that introduced the combined condition provisions to the workers’ compensation statutes. Or Laws 1990, ch 2, § 15. Keene, the court said, testified that the amendments “did not change ‘the basic industrial injury definition‘” in the existing law. 262 Or App at 648-49 (quoting Tape Recording, Joint Interim Special Committee on Workers’ Compensation, SB 1197, May 3, 1990, Tape 8, side B (statement of Jerry Keene)). From that quote, the court concluded: “Thus, a proponent of the legislation indicated that there was no intent to change the incident-based definition of a ‘compensable injury.‘” 262 Or App at 649 (emphasis in original).
The problems with the court‘s reliance on that history are several. To begin with, it begs the question; that is, it assumes the very issue in contention. The court began with its assertion that the existing law defined a “compensable injury” to refer to an injury-producing incident, because the court found no statute to the contrary. It then invoked the legislative history for the conclusion that the legislature did not intend to change existing law. But the court‘s reliance on the legislative history of the 1990 amendments makes sense only to the extent that its assumption about the existing law was correct in the first place. As we have noted, it was not.
Aside from that, the Court of Appeals appears to have taken the legislative history
A key component of that legislative effort was to alter the standard of causation that applied to combined condition claims. See Drews, 318 Or at 7-8 (describing legislative history of adoption of “major contributing cause” standard). The imposition of that standard was intended, among other things, to reduce the number of combined condition or consequential condition claims. See generally Errand v. Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc., 320 Or 509, 525, 888 P2d 544 (1995) (reviewing legislative history of 1990 legislation, which “narrowed the definition of ‘compensable injury’ in
It was the new standard of causation that Keene addressed in the portion of the legislative history that the Court of Appeals cited. He did not testify that the proposed amendment “did not change ‘the basic industrial injury definition‘” of what constitutes a “compensable injury,” as the court suggested. Brown, 262 Or App at 648-49. What he said was that the standard of causation that was currently “in the basic industrial injury definition” that applies not to a combined or consequential condition, but to the “initial industrial injury,” had not changed, as the following, fuller quotation makes clear:
“I would like to tell you that this language is far from ambiguous and uncertain as has been represented to you today. In fact, it does not change in one iota the standard of causation for the initial industrial injury. That language is arising out of and in the course of employment, which the courts translate as material contributing cause. More than negligible, less than half, but significant. That‘s the standard. Material contributing cause. It means any partial cause. That has not changed in the basic industrial injury definition. The only things we tried to do, or least I did in a similar effort was to attack conditions that were coming into the system that were there before the injury and things that were coming in after.”
Tape Recording, Joint Interim Special Committee on Workers’ Compensation, SB 1197, May 3, 1990, Tape 8, Side B (statement of Jerry Keene). The cited 1990 legislative history thus provides no support for the conclusion that the “otherwise compensable injury” component of a combined condition refers to an “injury incident,” and not the injury itself.
Perhaps more important, other legislative history appears to suggest that, when legislators and witnesses did address the issue, they often used the terms “injury” and “condition” synonymously. For example, during the same hearing from which the above quotation was taken, a legislator asked how the new law would work in the case of a worker whose back goes out when picking up something, and the worker already has degenerative arthritis. The legislator, Senator Bob Shoemaker, asked, “Would the traumatic injury
“Absolutely. It would be what‘s called the lit-up arthritic condition. And lighting up goes away. The trouble is, once you get even a partial contribution to a condition that degenerative arthritis is part of, any treatment directed at the arthritis stays in the system forever. There are lifetime medical rights. But under this scenario of this statute--what happens in most situations, the case never drops out of the system until the doctor is willing to say that that past injury plays absolutely no causal role in the treatment that he‘s rendering. And most doctors are very, very reluctant to say that. But in this scenario, once the doctor is willing to say well, that sprain, in and of itself has receded, and at this point what we‘ve got is arthritis. That‘s what‘s going to be there.”
Id. Thus, Keene explained that, when the medical condition--the work-related back sprain--ceases to be the major cause of the combined condition, the new law would apply.
Perhaps even more significant are the comments of Representative Kevin Mannix a few days later, addressing the subject of standards of causation under the new legislation and referring to whether work is the major contributing cause of a “given condition“:
“In terms of the standard for the compensability of an industrial injury, we do not change the law to major contributing cause. * * * We keep the standard for compensability of an industrial injury itself as whether work is a material contributing cause of a given condition.”
Tape Recording, Joint Interim Special Committee on Workers’ Compensation, SB 1197, May 7, 1990, Tape 26, Side A (statement of Rep Mannix) (emphasis added); see also Tape Recording, Joint Interim Special Committee on Workers’ Compensation, SB 1197, May 3, 1990, Tape 8, Side B (statement of Rep Jim Edmundson) (referring to “otherwise compensable injury” as “work-related condition” and “on-the-job condition“).
e. 1995 Amendments: Statement of Representative Mannix
The second piece of legislative history on which the Court of Appeals relied, concerns the comments of Representative Mannix regarding proposed amendments intended to “reinforce” some of the changes that had been made in the 1990 legislation. Tape Recording, Senate Committee on Labor and Government Operations Committee, SB 369, Jan 30, 1995, Tape 15, Side A (statement of Rep Mannix).7 In the course of summarizing the proposed amendments, Mannix more than once referred to the “compensable condition” in the existing law as “the injury incident.” Id.; Tape Recording, House Committee on Labor, SB 369, Mar 1, 1995, Tape 38, Side B (statement of Rep Mannix) (“work incident“). The Court of Appeals found those statements to be especially strong evidence of the legislature‘s intention to maintain the focus on the “injury incident,” and not the medical condition that the employer accepted. Brown, 262 Or App at 649-50.
Again, the court‘s reliance on the legislative history is problematic for a number of reasons. At the outset, it appears that Representative Mannix was not addressing the significance of the proposed amendments; rather, he was referring to the meaning of the “compensable injury” component of a combined condition claim under law that had been enacted several legislative sessions earlier. Ordinarily, a legislator‘s views on the meaning of existing law are of little, if any, probative value. As this court explained in DeFazio v. WPPSS, 296 Or 550, 561, 679 P2d 1316 (1984), “[t]he views legislators have of existing law may shed light on a new
Moreover, a more complete review of the legislative history reveals that Mannix at other times during the enactment process referred to a compensable “injury” not as an event or incident, but as “the work-related condition.” When introducing the amendments to the Senate Committee on Labor and Government Operations, for example, Mannix explained that the bill
“[p]ermits a claim denial when preexisting conditions are the major cause of the need for treatment. This gets back to where we were in our discussion before: the major contributing cause, preexisting conditions and how long you have to keep providing care for those when you had an industrial injury. This permits a denial of further responsibility after the work-related condition has been treated to the extent that the work event is no longer the major cause of disability or the need for treatment.”
Tape Recording, Senate Committee on Labor and Government Operations, SB 369, Jan 30, 1995, Tape 15, Side B (statement of Rep Mannix) (emphasis added). In that instance, Mannix apparently used the terms “work event” and “work-related condition” interchangeably.
In a later hearing before the House Committee on Labor, Mannix used different terminology, referring to the “compensable injury” as a particular medical condition. When asked to give an example of how the combined condition statute works, Mannix explained:
“If the physician says, ‘no, this is the aging process, work may have had some impact but it‘s mainly the aging process,’ then it won‘t be covered and the fact that you have a strain unless the two combine and stay combined so that the strain is the major contributing cause of some element of that degenerative disc disease. There‘ll be--the point of the combination ending will be when the strain is no longer the major contributing cause.”
Tape Recording, House Committee on Labor, SB 369, Mar 1, 1995, Tape 38, Side B (statement of Rep Mannix) (emphasis added).
Later in the hearing, Mannix again referred to back “strain” as an example of the compensable “injury” component of a combined condition claim:
“say you have degenerative disc disease--and everybody does at some point in life, usually at the age of 40 and discs are wearing down--and you suffer a strain and the strain combined with your degenerative disc disease. * * * But eventually, the strain resolved or becomes a very minimal strain, it‘s still interacting some with the degenerative disc disease. There are some that would argue that, ‘well, at that point degenerative disc disease remains compensable when there‘s some interaction.’ * * * The point would be to say, ‘well, wait a minute.’ The strain that you had--lifting incident is usually a soft tissue--has basically resolved. You might have some residuals of that--the strain will remain compensable but the degenerative disc disease is no longer going to be eligible for treatment as part of your claim because the injury is not the major cause of that degenerative disc disease.”
Tape Recording, House Committee on Labor, SB 369, Mar 1, 1995, Tape 39, Side A (statement of Rep Mannix).
Aside from the multiple instances in which Mannix referred to a compensable “injury” as a medical “condition,” there are numerous instances throughout the legislative history of the 1995 amendments in which legislators, legislative staff, and witnesses did likewise. For example, upon introduction of the 1995 amendments in the Senate, Senator Gene Derfler, one of the bill‘s sponsors, offered a detailed, section-by-section summary of the proposed amendments. Among other things, the summary explained that amendments to
Staff measure summaries of the 1995 amendments described the effect of the amendments in similar terms. Describing proposed amendments to
Thus, claimant‘s and the Court of Appeals’ reliance on a reference by Mannix to a compensable “injury” as an “injury incident” is an especially slim reed on which to rest their reading of
2. Meaning of “compensable” injury
The foregoing analysis establishes that the “injury” component of the phrase “otherwise compensable injury” in
a. Textual analysis
An examination of
In other words, the linchpin of claimant‘s argument and the Court of Appeals’ analysis
Claimant and OTLA object that
Claimant and OTLA further object that nothing in the definition of the term in
b. Prior judicial construction
As far back as the early 1980s, this court concluded that an employer‘s written acceptance had the effect of defining what constituted “compensable injuries.” In Bauman v. SAIF, 295 Or 788, 670 P2d 1027 (1983), for example, the court held that, once an employer or insurer accepts a particular condition, it may not later reverse that acceptance and challenge its compensability. The court‘s rationale was that treating the acceptance as defining the scope of compensable injuries binds employers to cover the accepted conditions and prevents later attempts to retreat from covering what previously had been accepted. To hold otherwise, the court explained, “would encourage degrees of instability in the workers’ compensation system that we do not believe the statute contemplates.” Id. at 793; see also Georgia-Pacific v. Piwowar, 305 Or 494, 499, 753 P2d 948 (1988) (“In the absence of fraud, misrepresentation or other illegal activity, an insurer who accepts a claim for compensation may not later deny the same claim.“). Relatedly, in Johnson v. Spectra Physics, 303 Or 49, 58, 733 P2d 1367 (1987), the court held that, when an employer or insurer issues a partial denial of a worker‘s claim, the worker must appeal that denial if he or she believes that work caused additional compensable injuries or diseases. The legislature‘s enactment of amendments to
Case law construing that codification makes clear that the phrase “otherwise compensable injury” refers to the particular medical condition that an employer has accepted as compensable. In particular, Multifoods, 333 Or 629, is close in point. In that case, the claimant suffered a back injury when working for an employer, and he filed a combined condition claim. The employer accepted an “acute lumbar strain (combined condition),” because the lumbar strain had combined with some preexisting degenerative lower back disease. Id. at 631-32. The employer later denied the combined condition on the ground that the accepted acute lumbar strain was no longer the major contributing cause of the combined condition. Id.
This court upheld the employer‘s denial of the combined condition claim. The court
This court interpreted the phrase “compensable injury” in the same manner in Sprague, 346 Or at 672. That case involved a dispute over whether an employer was required to pay expenses for medical services.
The court framed the issue as whether the gastric bypass surgery was directed to a medical condition caused in major part by the compensable injury. Concluding that the surgery was compensable, the court explained that “[t]he ‘compensable injury’ here is claimant‘s original meniscus tear, caused by a workplace accident.” Id. at 672. The court determined that the gastric bypass surgery was necessary to address the claimant‘s arthritic knee condition, and the major contributing cause of that condition was the original, accepted meniscus tear. Id. at 673-75. Once again, the court plainly referred to a “compensable injury” as the previously accepted medical condition that was caused by an on-the-job accident.
Claimant acknowledges Multifoods and the fact that it held that the combined condition in that case was no longer compensable because the accepted injury--the particular medical condition that the employer had accepted--was no longer the combined condition‘s major cause. Claimant nevertheless argues that the decision lacks precedential force because of an absence of analysis. The Court of Appeals went further, arguing that Multifoods actually supports its conclusion that the “otherwise compensable injury” component of a combined condition claim refers to the “injury incident.” Brown, 262 Or App at 655.
Concerning the contention that Multifoods was short on analysis, we disagree. The court noted that, under
As for the Court of Appeals’ suggestion that Multifoods actually supports its reading of the relevant statutes, it appears that, in characterizing Multifoods that way, the court relied on the fact that, at one point in its opinion, this court examined the question whether substantial evidence supported a finding that the major contributing cause of the combined condition was the claimant‘s degenerative condition. This court quoted a
The Court of Appeals apparently interpreted this court‘s quotation of the claimant‘s doctor‘s reference to the initial “accident” as meaning that this court viewed the “otherwise compensable injury” in that case as the accident itself, rather than the accepted injury. This court, however, quoted the doctor not for her opinion as to the initial cause of the condition, but for her opinion that--whatever that initial cause may have been--the major cause later became the preexisting degenerative condition. Moreover, whatever else might plausibly be read into this court‘s quotation from the claimant‘s physician, the fact remains that it expressly relied on
c. Legislative history
Claimant argues that treating a “compensable” injury as an “accepted” condition conflicts with the legislative history of the 1995 amendments to the workers’ compensation statutes. In that regard, claimant again relies on the opinion of the Court of Appeals. And again, a careful reading of the particular snippet of history on which the court relied offers no support for the conclusion that claimant and the court draw from it.
During hearings on the 1995 amendments, Mannix stated:
“The acceptance [of the combined condition] itself does not have any negative consequences for the worker. The negative consequences are if something isn‘t paid. If later on there is an issue about whether there is a new injury, it is important to go back and see what was accepted on the claim.”
Tape Recording, House Committee on Labor, SB 369, Mar 6, 1995, Tape 46, Side A (statement of Rep Mannix). The court emphasized the first sentence of those remarks as a refutation of the position that the legislature intended the scope of the accepted injury to limit the nature of the “otherwise compensable injury” in a combined condition claim. Brown, 262 Or App at 650.
The quoted excerpt, however, appears to have been taken from its context. In making those comments, Mannix was not discussing either the amendments to
What is more, it is not entirely clear that Mannix‘s comments actually were about then-proposed amendments to those sections. Rather, his comments appear to be directed at his understanding of the original statutory requirement that employers or insurers specify accepted conditions, enacted five years earlier.8 As we have noted above, a legislator‘s comments on the intended meaning of legislation adopted years earlier are entitled to no weight. See DeFazio, 296 Or at 561 (so stating).
More importantly, other legislative history confirms that, contrary to that court‘s reading
Recall that the 1990 legislative overhaul altered the standard of causation that applied to combined condition claims, requiring an employer to provide compensation “so long as” the “otherwise compensable injury” remains the “major contributing cause” of the combined condition.
In 1995, the legislature enacted a major revision to the workers’ compensation statutes, in large part in response to a number of court decisions that had interpreted the 1990 legislation. As Senator Derfler explained when he introduced SB 369 to the legislature:
“Whenever the law changes, the new language must be tested by the courts. By mid-1993, interpretations of SB 1197 were appearing from the Court of Appeals and later from the Supreme Court. As these cases were decided, it became clear that the actual language of SB 1197 was, in many cases, ambiguous or failed to clearly express the intent of the reforms. Provisions of the bill intended to reduce litigation contained too many loopholes.”
Exhibit 7, Senate Labor and Government Operations Committee, SB 369, Jan 30, 1995, at 1 (statement of Sen Derfler). SB 369 was intended to address a number of those prior appellate court decisions. One of them was United Airlines. To address the “loophole” identified by that Court of Appeals decision, the legislature enacted provisions that are now codified at
3. Policy arguments
Claimant argues that, “[i]f ‘compensable injury’ is defined by the conditions in the notice of acceptance, then the compensable injury becomes severely limited to what the insurer deems acceptable and will not reflect all of the medical effects caused by the work accident.” In particular, claimant contends that permitting the employer‘s acceptance to determine the scope of an “otherwise compensable injury” leaves him without a remedy for the worsening of his preexisting condition.
The problems with that complaint are two-fold. To begin with, it is essentially a policy argument. The fact of the matter is that the statutes explicitly equate the “otherwise compensable injury” component of a combined condition claim with the “accepted injury.” Arguments about whether that is fair or produces results at odds with public policy are better directed to the legislature. See Booth v. Tektronix, Inc., 312 Or 463, 473, 823 P2d 402 (1991) (“Weighing of policy arguments [in the context of workers’ compensation law] is within the purview of the legislature, not the courts.“).
Even putting that aside, though, our reading of the statutes does not leave a worker in
In fact, if claimant were correct that an “otherwise compensable injury” refers not to an accepted condition but more broadly to a “work accident” and “all the effects that flow from it,” the statute providing claimants the remedy of filing a new or omitted condition claim would serve no purpose at all. A claimant would never have to file such a claim, because the “otherwise compensable injury” already would include any additional medical conditions flowing from the work accident that the employer failed to accept. It is one thing for legislation to include some slippage in terms or an occasional redundancy. It is an altogether different thing to conclude that an entire section that the legislature took the trouble to enact has no effect whatever. As this court noted in Cloutier,
“[A]t the least, an interpretation that renders a statutory provision meaningless should give us pause, both as a matter of respect for a coordinate branch of government that took the trouble to enact the provision into law and as a matter of complying with the interpretive principle that, if possible, we give a statute with multiple parts a construction that ‘will give effect to all’ of those parts.”
Likewise, claimant was not without a remedy for his worsened conditions. As we noted above, the workers’ compensation statutes expressly provide a remedy for worsening. See
Claimant also invokes the policy concerns voiced by Workers’ Compensation Board Member Weddell in her concurring opinion. Specifically, claimant asserts that our reading of the relevant statutes cannot be correct because it would preclude an injured worker from obtaining compensation for diagnostic medical services “to investigate the complete result” of a work accident, and such a result is poor public policy.
As we have noted, the workers’ compensation statutes expressly address the subject of the compensability of such medical services in
In summary:
The foregoing perhaps could have been more plainly stated in the relevant statutes. As we noted at the outset of this opinion, the relevant statutes are rife with ambiguities. Still, the foregoing interpretation is the one most consistent with the workers’ compensation statutes as a whole, in light of prior judicial interpretations, and taking into account their legislative history. The identification of the intended meaning of a statute is not a precise science, and often our best efforts to apply rules of interpretation produce no more than an estimation of what the legislature likely intended. See Bell v. Tri-Met, 353 Or 535, 542, 301 P3d 901 (2013) (statutory construction analysis sometimes yields “no neat solution, and the best answer lies in sifting the analytical sand for probability, not certainty, of legislative intent.“).
III. APPLICATION
We turn, then, to the proper disposition of this case in light of the correct understanding of the relevant statutory terms. Claimant‘s combined condition claim characterized the “otherwise compensable injury” as “lumbar strain” caused by the December 14, 2008, accident. SAIF accepted the combined condition claim, specifying that the claim consisted of “lumbar strain combined with preexisting lumbar disc disease and preexisting spondylolisthesis.” Claimant never challenged the scope of that acceptance, as he was entitled to do. The “accepted injury” thus defined and limited what was the “otherwise compensable injury” for purposes of
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The final order of the Workers’ Compensation Board is affirmed.
Notes
The proposed changes to
“(B) If [a] an otherwise compensable injury combines at any time with a preexisting disease or condition to cause or prolong disability or a need for treatment, the [resultant] combined condition is compensable only if, so long as and to the extent that the otherwise compensable injury is [and remains] the major contributing cause of the disability of the combined condition or the major contributing cause of the need for treatment of the combined condition.”
Or Laws 1995, ch 332, § 1.