Stratemeyer v. Lincoln County

• Decision Date: 16 July 1993
• Docket Number: No. 92-376,92-376
• Citation: 50 St.Rep. 731,855 P.2d 506,259 Mont. 147
• Parties: Gary STRATEMEYER, Claimant and Respondent, v. LINCOLN COUNTY, Employer, and Maco Workers' Compensation Trust, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

Page 506

855 P.2d 506

259 Mont. 147

Gary STRATEMEYER, Claimant and Respondent, v. LINCOLN COUNTY, Employer and Maco Workers' Compensation Trust, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 92-376.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted Dec. 16, 1992.

Decided June 23, 1993.

Rehearing Denied July 16, 1993.

Norman H. Grosfield, Utick & Grosfield, Helena (argued), for defendant and appellant.

Sydney E. McKenna, Patterson, Marsillo, Tornabene, Schuyler & McKenna, Missoula (argued), for claimant and respondent.

John J. Richardson, Beck Law Offices, Bozeman, amicus curiae for Montana Trial Lawyers Ass'n.

Charles G. Adams, Helena, amicus curiae for State Compensation Mut. Ins. Fund.

Robert E. Sheridan, Garlington, Lohn & Robinson, Missoula, amicus curiae for Montana Self-Insurers Ass'n.

McDONOUGH, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the Worker's Compensation Court, concluding that subsections (3)(a) and (b) of § 39-71-119, MCA (1987), violate Article II, Section 4 of the Montana Constitution. We reverse.

The sole issue on appeal is whether the Workers' Compensation Court erred in concluding that subsections (3)(a) and (b) of § 39-71-119, MCA, violate Article II, Section 4 of the Montana Constitution, which states ... "[n]o person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws ..."

Gary Stratemeyer (Stratemeyer) was a deputy sheriff for Lincoln County from 1982 to 1990. On May 4, 1990, Stratemeyer was called by the Sheriff's dispatcher to respond to a suicide attempt near the Libby office. When he arrived at the home, he was led to a back bedroom where he found a 17 year old girl being held by her father. She had shot herself in the head but was still alive. Respondent took the girl from her father's arms and administered first aid, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation, until the ambulance arrived.

When the ambulance arrived, the respondent helped the crew carry her to the ambulance. He then served as an escort for the ambulance to the hospital where he learned the girl had died. He was then called away from the hospital to another accident scene.

Thereafter, the respondent was continually plagued by thoughts of the girl's suicide. A few weeks after the suicide, the respondent took sick leave because of anxiety over the event. He continued to suffer anxiety problems and was unable to return to work. Stratemeyer submitted a claim for Workers' Compensation on May 25, 1990, for a mental stress injury suffered during his employment as a police officer. The claim was denied on the basis that he had not suffered a "compensable injury" as defined by statute. (Statutory law prohibits coverage for a mental (stress) injury suffered without a physical component.) He then petitioned for a hearing before the Workers' Compensation Court for coverage of his medical costs and lost wages.

That court concluded that he did not suffer a "compensable injury" within the language of § 39-71-119, MCA. The Workers' Compensation Court also determined that this statute violated respondent's right to equal protection of the law because "claimant has been denied compensation based on the nature of his disability without regard to its cause as being work-related." Respondent contended, and the Workers' Compensation Court concluded, that the statute at issue was unconstitutional because it violated equal protection of the law.

There are limitations governing a court's ability to declare a statute unconstitutional. We take cognizance of the following cautions:

[I]t is our sacred duty to measure the Act by the terms of our constitutional limitations, as we interpret them. "It must be evident to anyone that the power to declare a legislative enactment void is one which the judge, conscious of the fallibility of the human judgment, will shrink from exercising in any case where he can conscientiously and with due regard to duty and official oath decline the responsibility. The legislative and judicial are co-ordinate departments of the government of equal dignity; each is alike supreme in the exercise of its proper functions, and cannot directly or indirectly while acting within the limits of its authority be subjected to the control or supervision of the other without an unwarrantable assumption by that other of power which, by the Constitution, is not conferred upon it. The Constitution apportions the powers of governments but it does not make any one of the three departments subordinate to another when exercising the trust committed to it. The courts may declare legislative enactments unconstitutional and void in some cases, but not because the judicial power is superior in degree or dignity to the legislative. Being required to declare what the law is in the cases which come before them, they must enforce the Constitution as the paramount law, whenever a legislative enactment comes in conflict with it."

State v. Dixon (1923), 66 Mont. 76, 84-85, 213 P. 227, 229.

Additionally:

When a legislative course of action expressed in statutes or budgetary laws is tested for constitutionality under the State Constitution, our review is circumscribed by certain principles. We must give the state constitutional provision a broad and liberal construction consistent with the intent of the people adopting it to serve the needs of a growing state. The constitutional provision should receive a reasonable and practical interpretation in accord with common sense. The constitutionality of a legislative enactment is prima facie presumed, and every intendment in its favor will be presumed, unless its unconstitutionality appears beyond a reasonable doubt. The question of constitutionality is not whether it is possible to condemn, but whether it is possible to uphold the legislative action which will not be declared invalid unless it conflicts with the constitution, in the judgment of the court, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Fallon County v. State (1988), 231 Mont. 443, 445-46, 753 P.2d 338, 339-340. (Citations omitted.) Every possible presumption must be indulged in in favor of the constitutionality of the Act. See State v. Safeway Stores, Inc. (1938), 106 Mont. 182, 199, 76 P.2d 81, 84.

With these principles in mind, we turn to the standard of review for Workers' Compensation cases challenging a statute on the basis of equal protection. We have enunciated the following:

[T]he right to receive Workers' Compensation benefits is not a fundamental right which would trigger a strict scrutiny analysis of equal protection. Nor does this statute infringe upon the rights of a suspect class.

When a right determined to be less than fundamental is infringed upon by classification, the test applied by this Court is the rational relationship test. That is, does a legitimate governmental objective bear some identifiable rational relationship to a discriminatory classification.

Cottrill v. Cottrill Sodding Service (1987), 229 Mont. 40, 42-43, 744 P.2d 895, 897 (Citations omitted). In other words, is the classification (means) used to accomplish a legitimate governmental objective rational? The statute at issue here, because it affects no fundamental right or suspect class, must be analyzed under the rational basis test.

Section 39-71-119, MCA, excludes from the definition of injury work-related injuries that do not have a physical component. Section 39-71-119, MCA, reads as follows:

(1) "Injury ... means:

(a) internal or external physical harm to the body.

. . . . .

(3) "Injury" or "injured" does not mean a physical or mental condition arising from:

(a) emotional or mental stress; or

(b) a non physical stimulus or activity.

The Workers' Compensation Court concluded that the respondent's injury was not covered under § 39-71-119, MCA, because it was a mental injury. The Workers' Compensation Court further concluded that the statute was unconstitutional because it improperly excluded people with mental injuries with no physical component from compensation under the Workers' Compensation Act in violation of equal protection of the law. In applying the rational basis test to the exclusion for above conditions without a physical component, the Workers' Compensation Court stated that "[i]f a rational basis exists for the classification created by section 39-71-119, MCA (1987), the legislature must provide it. The Court may not speculate to find it." The court concluded that the classification did not meet the rational basis test because it could glean no purpose for the legislation from the statute itself or its legislative history.

However, appellant argues that the Workers' Compensation Court should have sought "any combination of purposes that the Legislature might have been attempting to achieve" in enacting § 39-71-119, MCA. The Ninth Circuit has stated: "[i]n our review of governmental purposes, ... we need not rely only upon those purposes the legislature, litigants, or district court have espoused, but may also consider any other rational purposes possibly motivating enactment of the challenged statute." Mountain Water v. Mont. Dept. of Public Serv. Reg. (9th Cir.1990), 919 F.2d 593, 597. See also; Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools (1988), 487 U.S. 450, 462-463, 108 S.Ct. 2481, 2490, 101 L.Ed.2d 399; Cottrill v. Cottrill Sodding Service (1987), 229 Mont. 40, 43, 744 P.2d 895, 897; ( [a]lthough this Court could speculate as to why the legislature elected to treat these select individuals differently under the Workers' Compensation laws....) (Emphasis added.) The purpose of the legislation does not have to appear on the face of the legislation or in the legislative history but may be any possible purpose of which the court can conceive. In this case, the Workers' Compensation Court expected the legislature to provide the purpose. This, however, is not required of legislation being examined relative to equal protection.

Appellant contends that the Workers' Compensation Court ignored the rule that legislation is presumed to be constitutional. Further,...