Williams v. PORT AUTHORITY OF NY

• Citation: 175 N.J. 82,813 A.2d 531
• Parties: John J. WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Respondent, v. The PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY, Respondent-Appellant.
• Decision Date: 14 January 2003
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

813 A.2d 531

175 N.J. 82

John J. WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Respondent, v. The PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY, Respondent-Appellant.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued October 8, 2002.

Decided January 14, 2003.

Michael D. Driscoll, New York City, argued the cause for appellant (Hugh H. Welsh, Deputy General Counsel, attorney; Christopher J. Neumann, Howard D. Conkling and George P. Cook, on the briefs).

Brian P. Campbell, Hackensack, argued the cause for respondent.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by COLEMAN, J.

In this workers' compensation case, the petitioner has filed a claim alleging that he has sustained an occupational pulmonary disease that is causally related to his twenty-eight years of employment with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (Port Authority). The sole issue before us is whether the New Jersey Division of Workers' Compensation (Division) should have exercised subject-matter jurisdiction based on four months of exposure in New Jersey that predated twenty-one years of subsequent exposure in New York. The Division and a majority in the Appellate Division held that the fourmonth exposure was sufficiently substantial to constitute injury, thereby conferring jurisdiction. We disagree and reverse.

I.

Petitioner was employed by the Port Authority from 1969 until the time of his age retirement in 1997. The employment contract was made in New York where petitioner resided throughout his employment. Prior to February 1973, petitioner worked as an elevator operator in New York. Thereafter, he was assigned to perform maintenance work. He worked from February 4, 1973, until June 11, 1973, a period of approximately four months, on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge cleaning tollbooths and tiled walls of the tunnels associated with the bridge. He used strong chemicals as cleaning and degreasing agents. In addition, he was exposed to exhaust fumes from vehicles crossing the bridge. At no time during that four-month interval did petitioner complain of symptoms or a disability related to his work. At the end of the four months, petitioner was assigned to perform work at LaGuardia Airport, using the same chemicals and degreasing agents, where he remained for approximately eight years. He was then assigned to perform the same work at Kennedy Airport where he worked until 1994 when he accepted a skycap position. While working at the airports, he also was exposed to exhaust fumes from planes using the taxiways and runways. He retired from the skycap job in 1997 based on his age. Petitioner first consulted a physician for pulmonary problems in 1993. His pulmonary problem, for which he seeks compensation, has been diagnosed by petitioner's expert as "chronic bronchitis and probable restrictive pulmonary disease."

In May 1997, petitioner filed an occupational workers' compensation claim with the Division alleging, among other conditions, pulmonary disability related to his work exposure between September 22, 1969, and May 15, 1997. Although the Port Authority raised the defense of lack of subject-matter jurisdiction in its answer, the Judge of Compensation reserved decision on the jurisdictional issue until the conclusion of the trial. At the conclusion of the trial, the judge found that the Division should exercise jurisdiction and awarded petitioner a partial permanent disability of twenty percent for chronic bronchitis. The Port Authority appealed, contending that the Division should not have exercised extraterritorial jurisdiction.

A divided panel in the Appellate Division in a published opinion, Williams v. Port Authority, 345 N.J.Super. 549, 552-53, 786 A.2d 114 (2001), relied on this Court's opinion in Boyle v. G. & K. Trucking Co., 37 N.J. 104, 112, 179 A.2d 514 (1962), and affirmed. The majority concluded that petitioner sustained an injury in New Jersey during the four months of exposure in this State. Williams, supra, 345 N.J.Super. at 551-53, 786 A.2d 114. The court reasoned that because petitioner had a gradually progressive occupational disease from the cumulative exposure, our decisional law regarding apportionment of occupational disease disability among successive employers, Bond v. Rose Ribbon & Carbon Mfg. Co., 42 N.J. 308, 311, 200 A.2d 322 (1964), and case law related to the computation of the statute of limitations in occupational disease cases, Earl v. Johnson & Johnson, 158 N.J. 155, 161, 728 A.2d 820 (1999), should be followed in determining whether petitioner's four-month employment exposure in New Jersey was sufficient to permit the Division to exercise jurisdiction. Williams, supra, 345 N.J.Super. at 554-55, 786 A.2d 114. The majority concluded that petitioner's exposure in New Jersey "was not a casual, brief or insubstantial period of exposure." Id. at 557, 786 A.2d 114. Finally, the majority concluded that because it cannot be determined at what point during the twenty-one year exposure the pulmonary-disease process commenced, it should be deemed to have commenced simultaneously with the beginning of the exposure on February 4, 1973 in New Jersey. Ibid.

The dissenting member of the panel concluded that the majority's reliance on Bond, Earl, and Peck v. Newark Morning Ledger Co., 344 N.J.Super. 169, 781 A.2d 58 (App.Div.2001), was misplaced. Williams, supra, 345 N.J.Super. at 558, 786 A.2d 114 (Wefing, J., dissenting). That member asserted that the issue before the court was one of jurisdiction and not one involving the statute of limitations, liability for exposure, or waiver of workers' compensation benefits. Ibid. Judge Wefing concluded that petitioner's four months of work in New Jersey, which predated the termination of his last exposure by more than twenty-one years, were insufficient to warrant New Jersey exercising jurisdiction. Id. at 559, 786 A.2d 114. This appeal is before us based on that dissent. R. 2:2-1(a)(2).

II.

Petitioner invoked the jurisdiction of the Division based on the assertion that he was injured in this State. He took that position because the four-month work exposure is his only nexus to New Jersey. The Port Authority contends that New Jersey has no legitimate interest in accepting jurisdiction based on petitioner's assertion that an injury occurred here given that all but four months of petitioner's twenty-eight-year career with the Port Authority was spent in New York. The Port Authority argues that the work in New Jersey was for such a short time and so long ago that petitioner is unable to demonstrate that he was injured here.

A.

Initially, we must determine what should be the appropriate standard for resolving whether an occupational exposure in this State sufficiently caused an injury in this State to permit the invocation of the Division's jurisdiction. We begin our analysis with Boyle v. G. & K Trucking Co., supra, 37 N.J. at 112, 179 A.2d 514, where the Court held that the Division has jurisdiction to entertain a claim filed by a resident employed by an out-of-state business when "he was accidentally injured here while performing his duties here on a work assignment from his employer." Ibid. Boyle involved traumatic injuries caused by an automobile accident and did not purport to establish a standard with respect to occupational disease claims. Id. at 106, 179 A.2d 514. It did, however, cite with approval Professor Arthur Larson's list of practical factors that should be considered when determining whether a state should exercise its jurisdiction to hear a "claim by a workman hired elsewhere but injured within its borders." Id. at 109, 179 A.2d 514. Those factors are:

1. Place where the injury occurred;

2. Place of making the contract;

3. Place where the employment relation exists or is carried out;

4. Place where the industry is localized;

5. Place where the employee resides; or

6. Place whose statute the parties expressly adopted by contract.

[9 Larson's Workers' Compensation Law § 142.01 at 142-2 (2000).]

Professor Larson also provides guidance with respect to which state's law should control if jurisdiction is exercised. He states:

When one of these [factors] falls within the local state, and some or all of the others occur in another state, the question arises whether the local state can apply its statute without being accused of denying full faith and credit to the statute of the other. As matters now stand, it is clear that the state which was the locus of any one of the first three items-contract, injury or employmentand probably also of the next two-employee residence and business localization-can constitutionally apply its statute if it wants to.

[Ibid.]

Although the New Jersey Workers' Compensation Act (Act), N.J.S.A. 34:15-1 to -128, does not address the issue of extraterritoriality, Connolly v. Port Authority, 317 N.J.Super. 315, 318, 722 A.2d 110 (App.Div.1998), all of the cases cited in Boyle involve accidents occurring in New Jersey as opposed to periods of occupational exposure within New Jersey. Id. at 107-08, 179 A.2d 514. The fact that the employer is a bi-state agency has not heretofore been recognized as a basis to assume jurisdiction. Connolly, supra, 317 N.J.Super. at 320-21, 722 A.2d 110. Indeed, the majority in this case recognized as much. Williams, supra, 345 N.J.Super. at 553, 786 A.2d 114. The traumatic accidents involved in Boyle and cases cited therein that caused injury in New Jersey, thereby satisfying Professor Larson's place of injury extraterritoriality requirement, involved claims that allegedly satisfied the Act's requirements for a compensable accident, N.J.S.A. 34:15-7. There is a substantial difference between an accidental injury and an occupational injury. A compensable accident, although not defined in the Act, has been defined judicially as an "`unlooked for mishap or an untoward event which is not expected or designed.'" Ciuba v. Irvington Varnish & Insulator Co., 27 N.J. 127, 134, 141 A.2d 761 (1958); Joy v. Florence Pipe Foundry...