METROPOLITAN STEVEDORE CO. v. RAMBO ET AL.
No. 94-820
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 25, 1995—Decided June 12, 1995
515 U.S. 291
Robert Evans Babcock argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
Jeffrey P. Minear argued the cause for the federal respondent in support of petitioner under this Court’s Rule 12.4. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Days, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, Allen H. Feldman, Nathaniel I. Spiller, and Edward D. Sieger.
Thomas J. Pierry argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent Rambo.*
JUSTICE KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 22 of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA or Act), 44 Stat. 1437, as amended,
In 1980, respondent John Rambo injured his back and leg while wоrking as a longshore frontman for petitioner Metropolitan Stevedore Company. Rambo filed a claim with the Department of Labor that was submitted to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). After Rambo and petitioner stipulated that Rambo sustained a 22 1/2% permanent partial disability and a corresponding $120.24 decrease in his $534.38 weekly wage, the ALJ, pursuant to LHWCA § 8(c)(21), awarded Rambo 66 2/3% of that figure, or $80.16 per week. App. 5. Because the ALJ also found that Rambo’s disability was not due solely to his work-related injury and was materially and substantially greater than that which would have resulted from the subsequent injury alone, LHWCA § 8(f)(1),
After the award, Rambo began attending crane school. With the new skills so acquired, he obtained longshore work as a crane operator. He also worked in his spare time as a heavy lift truck оperator. Between 1985 and 1990, Rambo’s average weekly wages ranged between $1,307.81 and $1,690.50, more than three times his preinjury earnings, though his physical condition remained unchanged. In light
II
The LHWCA is a comprehensive scheme to provide compensation in respect of disability or death of an employeе ... if the disability or death results from an injury occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States. LHWCA § 3,
A
Neither Rambo nor the Ninth Circuit has attempted to base their position on the language of the statute, wherе analysis in a statutory construction case ought to begin, for when a statute speaks with clarity to an issue judicial inquiry into the statute’s meaning, in all but the most extraordinary circumstance, is finished. Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505 U. S. 469, 475 (1992); Demarest v. Manspeaker, 498 U. S. 184, 190 (1991).
Section 22 of the Act provides the only way to modify an award once it has issued. The section states:
Upon his own initiative, or upon the application of any party in interest (including an еmployer or carrier which has been granted relief under section 908(f) of this title), on the ground of a change in conditions or because of a mistake in a determination of fact by the deputy commissioner, the deputy commissioner may, at any time prior to one year after the date of the last payment of compensation, ... or at any time prior to one year after the rejection of a claim, review a compensation case ... and ... issue a new compensation order which may terminate, continue, reinstate, increase, or decrease such compensation, or award compensation.
33 U. S. C. § 922 .
On two occasions we have construed the phrase mistake in a determination of fact and observed that nothing in the statutory language supports attempts to limit it to particular kinds of factual errors or to cases involving new evidence or changed circumstances. See O’Keeffe v. Aerojet-General Shipyards, Inc., 404 U. S. 254, 255-256 (1971) (per curiam);
Our interpretation is confirmed by the language of LHWCA §§ 2(10) and 8(c)(21). Section 2(10) defines [d]isability as incapacity because of injury to earn the wages which the employee was receiving at the time of injury in the same or any other employment.
Rambo’s insistence on what seems to us a narrowly technical and impractical construction of this phrаse, O’Keeffe, supra, at 255 (quoting Luckenbach S. S. Co. v. Norton, 106 F. 2d 137, 138 (CA3 1939)), does more than disregard the plain language of §§ 22, 2(10), and 8(c)(21). It also is inconsistent with the structure and purpose of the LHWCA. Like most other workers’ compensation schemes, the LHWCA does not compensate physical injury alone but the disability produced by that injury. See LHWCA §§ 3(a), 8,
B
Given that the language of § 22 and the structure of thе Act itself leave little doubt as to Congress’ intent, any argument based on legislative history is of minimal, if any, relevance. See Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 254 (1992); Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 136 (1991); cf. Intercounty Constr. Corp. v. Walter, 422 U. S. 1, 8 (1975) (construing ambiguity in application of § 22’s 1-year limitations period). In any event, we find Rambo’s arguments that the legislative history provides support for his view lacking in force.
From congressional Reports accompanying amendments to § 22 in 1934, 1938, and 1984, Reports suggesting Cоngress was unwilling to extend the 1-year limitations period in which a party may seek modification, Rambo would have us infer that Congress intended a narrow construction of other parts of § 22, including the circumstances that would justify reopening an award. We rejected this very argument in Banks, supra, at 465, and its logic continues to elude us. Congress’ decision to maintain a 1-year limitations period
Rambo next contends that following McCormick S. S. Co. v. United States Employees’ Compensation Comm’n, 64 F. 2d 84 (CA9 1933), the Courts of Appeals unanimously held that change in conditions refers only to changes in physical conditions, so Congress’ reenactment of the phrase change in conditions when it amended other parts of § 22 as late as 1984 must be understood to endorse that approach. We have often relied on Congress’ reenact[ment of] statutory language that has been given a consistent judicial construction, Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A., 511 U. S. 164, 185 (1994); see Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U. S. 552, 566-567 (1988), in particular where Congress was aware of or made reference to that judicial construction, see Brown v. Gardner, 513 U. S. 115, 121 (1994); United States v. Calamaro, 354 U. S. 351, 359 (1957). The cases in the relеvant period, however, were based on a misreading of McCormick, supra, which did not reject the idea that § 22 included a change in wage-earning capacity, but merely expressed doubt that § 22 applies to a change in earnings due to economic conditions, 64 F. 2d, at 85; they involved dicta, not holdings, see, e. g., Pillsbury v. Alaska Packers Assn., 85 F. 2d 758, 760 (CA9 1936), rev’d on other grounds, 301 U. S. 174 (1937); Burley Welding Works, Inc. v. Lawson, 141 F. 2d 964, 966 (CA5 1944); General Dynamics Corp. v. Director, OWCP, 673 F. 2d 23, 25, n. 6 (CA1 1982) (per curiam); and they were not uniform in their approach, see, e. g., Hole v. Miami Shipyards Corp., 640 F. 2d 769, 772 (CA5 1981) ([T]he compensation award may be modified years later to reflect ... greater or lesser economic injury). Under these circumstances, we are not persuaded that congressional silence in the reenactment of the phrase change in conditions carries any significance.
In a related argument, Rambo criticizes petitioner’s reading of § 22 because it sweeps away an accumulation of more
Finally, Rambo argues that including a change in wage-earning capacity as a change in conditions under § 22 will flood the OWCP and the courts with litigation because parties will request modification every time an employee’s wages change or the economy takes a turn in one direction or the other. Experience in the 11 years since the Benefits Review Board dеcided Fleetwood, supra, suggests otherwise, but that argument is, in any case, better directed at Congress or the Director in her rulemaking capacity, see LHWCA § 39(a),
We hold that a disability award may be modified under § 22 where there is a change in the employee’s wage-earning capacity, even without any change in the employee’s physical condition. Because Rambo raised other arguments before the Ninth Circuit that the pаnel did not have the opportunity to address, we reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
The statutory provision that the Court construes today was enacted in 1927. Although one 1985 case reached the result the Court adopts today, Fleetwood v. Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., 776 F. 2d 1225 (CA4), over 60 years of otherwise consistent precedent accords with respondents’ interpretation of the Act. For the reasons stated by Judge Warriner in his dissent in Fleetwood, I would not change this settled view of the law without an appropriate directive from Congress. Judge Warriner correctly observed:
Beginning with the first opinion dealing with the question, handed down in 1933, and continuing without wavering thereafter, the courts have uniformly inter-
preted the term ‘change in conditions’ in Section 22 of the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U. S. C. § 922 (1982), to refer exclusively to a change in the physical condition of the employee receiving compensation. This also was ‘the meaning generally attributed to similar phraseology in state workman’s compensation acts’ in existence before or shortly after the enactment of the LHWCA in 1927. See Atlantic Coast Shipping Co. v. Golubiewski, 9 F. Supp. 315, 317 (D. Md. 1934).The majority’s nice effort to distinguish this prior case law serves only to highlight the numerous and varied factual situations in which the federal courts have withstood temptation and have strictly adhered to this interpretation. In McCormick Steamship Co. v. United States Employees’ Compensation Commission, 64 F. 2d 84 (9th Cir. 1933), for example, the Court refused to allow the modification of a compensation order under Section 22 wherе the employee’s earnings were diminished as a result of deteriorating economic conditions. Id., at 85. Conversely, the fact that an employee received higher wages because of better economic conditions in the 1940’s was held not to constitute a ‘change in conditions’ so as to allow a reduction in the employee’s compensation award. Burley Welding Works v. Lawson, 141 F. 2d 964, 966 (5th Cir. 1944). The courts have refused to find a ‘change in conditions’ where the employee was imprisoned in a penitentiary for life, Atlantic Coast Shipping Co. v. Golubiewski, 9 F. Supp. at 316-19, or where the employee was committed to an insane asylum. Bay Ridge Operating Co. v. Lowe, 14 F. Supp. 280, 280-82 (S. D. N. Y. 1936).
In every one of these cases, decided soon after the effective date of the Act, the respective courts explicitly stated and held that the term ‘change in conditions’ in Section 22 refers to the physical condition of the em-
ployee receiving compensation. In a more recent case, General Dynamics, Inc. v. Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, 673 F. 2d 23 (1st Cir. 1982), the court reiterated this interpretation: ‘[c]ourts uniformly have held a “change in conditions” means a change in the employee’s physical condition, not other conditions.’ Id., at 25[, n. 6] (citing Burley Welding Works, Inc. v. Lawson, 141 F. 2d at 966). Despite fifty years, and more, of precedent, the majority has overturned this established construction of the term ‘change in conditions’ and has revised it to have it apply to changes in economic conditions occurring during the term of compensation. Such a departure from settled prior case law is not warranted absent any indication from the Congress that such a change in the statute is what is desired by the lawmakers. Congress, it should not be necessary to add, indicates its desires by adopting legislation.
Fifty years is a long time. And perhaps it can be argued that the Board’s, and the courts’, and the Congress’ erstwhile interpretation of the phrase was inhumane, or unenlightened, or an anachronism, or something else even more disparaging. But it cannot be argued, I submit, that the prior interpretation was not and is not the law. Id., at 1235-1236 (footnotes omitted).
For those reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.