Hudson v. Kaiser Steel Corp.

• Decision Date: 25 March 1983
• Docket Number: No. 18655,18655
• Citation: 662 P.2d 29
• Parties: Mickey C. HUDSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. KAISER STEEL CORPORATION (Employer), The Industrial Commission of Utah, and the Second Injury Fund of the State of Utah, Defendants and Respondents.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

Page 29

662 P.2d 29

Mickey C. HUDSON, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. KAISER STEEL CORPORATION (Employer), The Industrial Commission of Utah, and the Second Injury Fund of the State of Utah, Defendants and Respondents.

No. 18655.

Supreme Court of Utah.

March 25, 1983.

Virginius Dabney, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellant.

Timothy C. Allen, Edwin C. Barnes, David L. Wilkinson, Frank V. Nelson, Salt Lake City, for defendants and respondents.

OAKS, Justice:

The Industrial Commission ordered that amounts due an employee for permanent partial disability be offset by a previous overpayment of amounts due that employee for temporary total disability pertaining to the same injury. The employee challenges that decision in this petition for review.

The employee was injured on the job on October 4, 1979. From that date until he returned to work on August 3, 1981, his employer, Kaiser Steel Corp., paid him $210 per week for temporary total disability. These payments totalled $17,700. After a succession of hearings, the administrative law judge adopted the medical panel's findings that the employee's condition had become stable on May 1, 1980, and that his industrial accident had resulted in a 15 percent permanent partial impairment of the whole man. As a result, the Commission concluded that the employer should have paid the employee $210 per week from October 4, 1979, to May 1, 1980 (a total of $6,269.97), that the employee should have returned to work on May 1, 1980, and that the employee should have received compensation at the rate of $140 per week for 46.8 weeks (a total of $6,552) for the 15 percent permanent partial impairment. The employee does not challenge these findings or conclusions.

The Commission ordered that since the employer had already paid the employee $17,700 for temporary total disability, the employer (1) had fulfilled its $6,269.97 obligation in that category, (2) could offset the overpayment against the $6,552 award for permanent partial disability and therefore owed nothing further in that category, and (3), as to the balance of the overpayment, was entitled to a credit of $4,878.03 against any future compensation it might owe the employee because of this industrial accident.

The employee challenges the second and third conclusions, contending, basically, that temporary total disability and permanent partial disability are totally different kinds of compensation schemes, and that there is no legal warrant for permitting an overpayment in one category to be offset against an obligation in the other category. The employer counters that temporary total and permanent partial are merely different facets of a single wage loss program for an industrial injury, so that a wage loss compensated under one facet of the program cannot equitably be compensated anew under the other. In support of its argument, the employer relies on the equitable principles cited in U.C.A., 1953, § 35-1-66 ("such period of compensation as the commission shall deem equitable") and relied on by this Court in analogous circumstances in Di Giorgia Corp. v. Industrial Commission, Utah, 575 P.2d 190 (1978) (§ 35-1-78 power to modify orders authorizes Commission to take previously paid permanent partial disability payments and redesignate them as temporary total compensation).

We conclude that the Commission did not act contrary to law or unreasonably in ordering the offsets. Some state statutes direct offsets in similar circumstances, ¹ but Utah has no such...