The details of these cases need not clutter this opinion. Each medical provider filed petitions in the Division for payment of services rendered to employees of the respondent employers. And each medical provider filed its claim more than two years from the date of each employee's accident but less than six years from the claim's accrual.
Before the 2012 legislative amendment that generated the question presented, a medical provider was entitled to file a collection action for payment of its services in the superior court and had no obligation to participate in a patient's pending compensation action. See Univ. of Mass. Memorial Medical Center, Inc. v. Christodoulou,
With an apparent intent to more formally herd all medical-provider claims into the Division,
When a dispute about a statute's meaning arises, a court's "paramount goal" is to ascertain the legislative intent; the "best indicator of that intent is the statutory language." DiProspero v. Penn,
According to respondents - the employers in these workers' compensation matters - the 2012 amendment implicitly subjected the appellant medical providers' claims to the statute of limitations contained within the Act - a statute which requires that "[e]very claimant for compensation under [the Act]" submit a verified petition to the Division "within two years after the date on which the accident occurred." N.J.S.A. 34:15-51. They argue that because, with the 2012 amendment, medical providers must now commence their claims in the Division, N.J.S.A. 34:15-15, they thereby become - a fortiori - "claimants for compensation under [the Act]" and, so, their claims must be commenced within two years of "the accident"; in other words, in respondents' view, all those who seek relief in the Division are "claimants for compensation" and the claim of "[e]very claimant for compensation" is
First, the fact that the Legislature did not simply express that the Act's two-year time bar would apply to medical-provider claims is alone persuasive of its more likely intent to leave things as they were. It was well-established long before the 2012 amendment that the timeliness of medical-provider claims was governed by the general six-year statute of limitations, N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1 (requiring that "[e]very action at law ... for recovery upon a contractual claim ... shall be commenced within 6 years next after the cause of any such action shall have accrued"). See Oldfield v. N.J. Realty Co.,
Second, the participants debate the significance of an earlier draft of the bill amending N.J.S.A. 34:15-15. If enacted, that draft would have imposed a duty on the Division "to provide procedures to resolve those disputes, including a system of binding arbitration and procedural requirements for medical providers or any other party to the dispute." Sponsor's Statement to A. 2652 (May 10, 2012). In his written decision, the compensation judge viewed the deletion of this language from the final draft as revealing the
Third, and most obvious, is the fact that the Legislature made no alteration to N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 when it amended N.J.S.A. 34:15-15. Respondents, and amici who line up on their side, believe the Legislature intended to incorporate medical providers into the existing claimant-for-compensation category of N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 without saying so. That category, however, was always understood as referring only to employees. Other provisions in the Act clearly equate "claimant" with "employee."
And, fourth, we are most persuaded that the Legislature intended to leave unaltered the time within which medical-provider claims must be commenced because the Act's two-year time-bar simply doesn't fit. N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 requires that a petition for compensation must be filed within two years of "the accident."
Undaunted by this roadblock in their theory, respondents, and the amici who have taken their side, argue that we should conclude the two-year time-bar - when applied to medical-provider claims - does not apply in the same way that it does when the claim is asserted by an employee notwithstanding the statute's plain language. They claim that the triggering date should not be the worker's accident but the date of the medical provider's service to the employee. There are a number of fallacies in this
But, even more damning, in making this argument respondents believe we should, by judicial fiat, provide an alternate interpretation of the plain and unambiguous language of N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 to fit their theory. They would have us judicially engraft a phrase onto N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 to include an alternative triggering date for medical-provider claims. They ask us to declare that N.J.S.A. 34:15-15 should now be understood to mean that a medical provider must file its claim either, as the statutes declares, within two years of the date of the employee's accident or, as respondents would have us insert into the statute, "within two years following the service rendered."
When ascertaining whether legislation clear on one point also implicitly impacted some other point, we sometimes find ourselves "in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs." Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence 42 (1920). To be sure, there are times when legislative intent might be gathered from less than clear statements and, in those cases, we apply statutory-interpretation tenets to develop an educated estimate about what the Legislature likely intended. But, here, we find nothing but legislative silence on the point in controversy; not even "a set of arbitrary signs" supports respondents' argument.
The judgments under review are reversed and the matters remanded for further proceedings on these timely claims.
Notes
N.J.S.A. 34:5-1 to -146.
The triggering date for the time-bar in N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 is the date of the employee's accident but for the time-bar in N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1, it is the date of the action's accrual.
In 2010, the Task Force on Medical Provider Claims, which was formed by the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, issued a report observing that there had been an increase in medical billing disputes between insurers and medical providers and, consequently, a delay of such matters in the Division and a lack of uniformity in the administration and adjudication of such claims by the Division. See N.J. Dep't of Lab. and Workforce Dev., Task Force on Med. Provider Claims (Nov. 8, 2010), which may be found at https://www.nj.gov/labor/forms_pdfs/wc/pdf/110810_TaskForce_MedicalProviderClaims.pdf.
As pointed out by amicus medical facilities, many provisions of the Act are phrased in ways that unmistakably equate "claimant" with "employee" and cannot sensibly be viewed as incorporating medical providers. See N.J.S.A. 34:15-7.2, -12(c)(23), -28.2, -33.3, -34, -41.1, -43, -50, and -64(a)(2)(a).
Amicus Insurance Council of New Jersey argues that N.J.S.A. 34:15-41 demonstrates an intention to impose a two-year time-bar on medical providers. We see no merit in this contention. N.J.S.A. 34:15-41 merely declares that "[i]n case of personal injury or death all claims for compensation on account thereof shall be forever barred unless a petition is filed ... as prescribed by [N.J.S.A. 34:15-51 ]." This statute was enacted in 1911 and last amended in 1931. So, one can only wonder how it sheds light on the Legislature's intent in enacting the 2012 amendment.
We are mindful that other events may trigger a timely action by a claimant for compensation. These alternative events make even clearer that the Legislature constructed this statute only for claims made by workers. For example, a claimant and the claimant's "employer" may agree for compensation and the claimant may commence a claim within two years of the "failure of the employer to make payment pursuant to the terms of such agreement." N.J.S.A. 34:15-51. Since a medical provider has no "employer" in this context, these alternative events have no application to a medical-provider claim. The statute provides another exception: "repair or replacement of prosthetic devices shall not be construed to extend the time for filing of a claim petition."
Because we decline to interpret the statutory scheme so as to impose a two-year time limitation on medical-provider claims, we need not reach the medical providers' argument that any holding that the two-year time-bar applies should be given prospective effect. We also need not consider the medical providers' argument in some of these cases that respondents' failure to plead the statute of limitations constituted a waiver of the defense or respondents' contention that this argument was abandoned.