Vaillancourt v. New Britain Machine/Litton

• Decision Date: 12 January 1993
• Docket Number: No. 14503,14503
• Citation: 618 A.2d 1340,224 Conn. 382
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: . NEW BRITAIN MACHINE/LITTON et al. Supreme Court of Connecticut

Page 1340

618 A.2d 1340

224 Conn. 382

Leo VAILLANCOURT v. NEW BRITAIN MACHINE/LITTON et al.

No. 14503.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Oct. 30, 1992.

Decided Jan. 12, 1993.

David A. Kelly, with whom, on the brief, was Dominick Statile, Glastonbury, for appellants (named defendant et al.).

Laurie Adler, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Robin L. Wilson, Asst. Atty. Gen., and, on the brief, Richard Blumenthal, Atty. Gen., and Charles A. Overend, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee (defendant Second Injury and Compensation Assur. Fund).

Before CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON, NORCOTT and KATZ, JJ.

NORCOTT, Associate Justice.

The dispositive issue in this case is whether, under General Statutes (Rev. to 1983) § 31-349, ¹ notice to transfer liability to the Second Injury and Compensation Assurance Fund (Fund) must be given to the Fund ninety days prior to: (1) the expiration of the first one hundred four weeks of the claimant's disability; or (2) the expiration of the first one hundred four weeks of compensation payments made to the claimant by his employer. The defendants New Britain Machine/Litton (New Britain Machine) and Travelers Insurance Company (Travelers) ² appealed to the compensation review division from an order of the workers' compensation commissioner dismissing as untimely their request to transfer the claim of the plaintiff, Leo Vaillancourt (claimant), to the defendant Fund. The compensation review division sustained the decision of the workers' compensation commissioner. The defendants appealed from the decision of the compensation review division to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199(c). We affirm the decision of the compensation review division.

The following facts are relevant to this appeal. On September 18, 1980, the claimant sustained an injury to his back in the course of his employment with New Britain Machine. Although the injury initially did not interfere with the claimant's ability to work, his condition subsequently worsened and, on February 22, 1982, he underwent surgery. At that time he began to receive temporary total disability payments from Travelers, New Britain Machine's workers' compensation insurer. On June 16, 1986, the claimant's treating physician opined that the claimant had reached maximum medical improvement. Accordingly, the Travelers' benefit payments to the claimant were then converted from compensation for temporary total disability to compensation for a 15 percent permanent partial disability of the back.

Travelers first notified the Fund of its intent to transfer liability for the claim pursuant to § 31-349 on January 23, 1984. ³ Notice was not perfected, however, until February 15, 1984, when Travelers sent the Fund a voluntary agreement as required by § 31-349. ⁴ Had the litigation ceased at this point, both notices would have been untimely, as the statutory one hundred four week period would have commenced on the date of the claimant's surgery, making November 22, 1983, the latest date that timely notice could be given to the Fund.

Litigation stemming from the claimant's injury, however, continued. As a result of his back surgery, the claimant brought a medical malpractice suit against the surgeon who performed the operation. ⁵ Travelers intervened in this lawsuit pursuant to General Statutes § 31-293 ⁶ to recoup workers' compensation benefits that it had already paid to the claimant. In October, 1989, the claimant settled his malpractice claim for $30,000, and Travelers received $7000 from the proceeds of the settlement.

Subsequent to their third party recovery, the defendants sought from the workers' compensation commissioner a determination regarding the timeliness of the February 15, 1984 notice to transfer liability for the claimant's permanent disability to the Fund. Travelers argued before the workers' compensation commissioner that its notice to the Fund was timely because, under its interpretation of § 31-349, the weeks of benefits amounting to the equivalent of the $7000 it had recovered in the third party malpractice action should not be counted in calculating the statutory period within which it was required to notify the Fund. Application of this interpretation of § 31-349 would extend the deadline for notice to the Fund to May 4, 1984. The commissioner rejected this argument, and concluded that Travelers' notice was untimely under § 31-349 and was not cured by the subsequent recovery in the malpractice case. Therefore, the commissioner dismissed Travelers' request to transfer the claim to the Fund. ⁷

The defendants appealed to the compensation review division, which affirmed the commissioner's finding and award. The review division stated that "the 'one-hundred-four-week period' refers to weeks of disability, not to the net number of weeks of benefits paid calculated after credit was given for third party recovery." The review division noted that the defendants' interpretation of § 31-349 would impose different time requirements in different situations and would thus diminish the principle of uniformity intended by the notice provision.

On appeal to this court, the defendants claim that the compensation review division improperly affirmed the commissioner's decision that Travelers' notice to the was not timely under § 31-349. The defendants claim, alternatively, that: (1) their notice was timely because § 31-349 should be interpreted to require notice of transfer to the Fund ninety days prior to the one hundred fourth week of compensation payments made by the claimant's employer to the claimant; and (2) any delay in notice should be excused because the delay did not cause prejudice to the Fund. We disagree with both of these claims.

I

The defendants first claim that both the workers' compensation commissioner and the compensation review division improperly interpreted the phrase "one-hundred-four-week period" in § 31-349 to mean one hundred four weeks of the claimant's disability. At the time relevant to this appeal, the relevant portions of § 31-349 provided that "[t]he employer ... shall in the first instance pay all awards of compensation and all medical expenses ... for the first one hundred four weeks of disability. As a condition precedent to the liability of the second injury fund, the employer ... must, ninety days prior to the expiration of the one-hundred-four-week period, notify the custodian of the second injury fund of the pending case...." (Emphasis added.) See footnote 1.

The defendants contend that the "one-hundred-four-week period" in the notice provision of § 31-349 does not refer to the first one hundred four weeks of the claimant's disability, but rather to the first one hundred four weeks of unreimbursed payments made by the employer to the claimant, that is, the amount of time it takes for the employer to pay out-of-pocket benefits equal to one hundred four weeks. Under this interpretation, the defendants argue, the $7000 recovery from the malpractice settlement extended the notice period by twenty-three weeks ⁸ because the employer in effect did not begin making out-of-pocket payments until August 6, 1982. Therefore, according to the defendants, the February 15, 1984 notice to the Fund was timely ⁹ and the commissioner improperly dismissed their request to transfer the claim to the Fund.

The Fund argues that the correct construction of the notice provision of § 31-349 is that, for the notice to be timely, the employer or insurer must give notice of transfer to the Fund ninety days prior to the expiration of the first one hundred four weeks of the claimant's disability. The Fund contends that the plain reading of the statute as a whole and the purpose of the notice requirement support its construction of the meaning of the "one-hundred-four-week period." Moreover, the Fund argues that any uncertainty regarding the legislative intent behind the statutory notice provision was clarified by a 1991 technical amendment to the act. Public Acts 1991, No. 91-32, §§ 35, 41. We agree with the Fund's interpretation of the notice provision of § 31-349.

" 'In construing any statute, we seek to ascertain and give effect to the apparent intent of the legislature.' United Illuminating Co. v. Groppo, 220 Conn. 749, 755, 601 A.2d 1005 (1992). '[W]hen the language of a statute is plain and unambiguous, we need look no further than the words themselves because we assume that the language expresses the legislature's intent.' American Universal Ins. Co. v. DelGreco, 205 Conn. 178, 193, 530 A.2d 171 (1987). We have acknowledged, however, in the context of workers' compensation legislation, that '[s]uch guidance is often of little help ... since words seldom have precise and unvarying meanings.' Jacques v. H.O. Penn Machinery Co., 166 Conn. 352, 359 n. 3, 349 A.2d 847 (1974)." Weinberg v. ARA Vending Co., 223 Conn. 336, 340-41, 612 A.2d 1203 (1992).

"When the language of a statute is unclear, we may ascertain the intent of the legislature by looking beyond the language to the statute's legislative history and the purpose that the statute was intended to serve." Id. at 341, 612 A.2d 1203. We have previously recognized that our construction of the Workers' Compensation Act should make " 'every part operative and harmonious with every other part insofar as is possible....' " Mingachos v. CBS, Inc., 196 Conn. 91, 104, 491 A.2d 368 (1985). In applying these principles, we are mindful that the legislature is presumed to have intended a just and rational result. Sanzone v. Board of Police Commissioners, 219 Conn. 179, 187, 592 A.2d 912 (1991).

It is an axiom of statutory construction that legislative intent is to be determined by an analysis of the language actually used in the legislation. Caltabiano v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 211 Conn. 662, 666, 560 A.2d 975 (1989). Reading the notice provision of § 31-349 as a whole, we are...