Cust v. University of Maine2/9/2001
ring officer to apply legal standards applicable to nonwork injuries based on the fact that the 400-week limitation had been reached and the employer's exposure for partial incapacity benefits has ceased.
We also agree with the University that the hearing officer's conclusion runs counter to the policy behind the adoption of the 400-week limitation. See P.L. 1987, ch. 559, Emergency Preamble (purpose of the 1987 amendments to reduce workers' compensation liability, generally, to prevent exodus of workers' compensation insurers from the State); McDonald v. Rumford Sch. Dist., 609 A.2d 1160, 1161 (Me. 1992). If insurers in multiple injury cases are not entitled to a reduction of benefits upon the expiration of the 400-week period, or if an insurer's liability for one injury is immediately transferred to another insurer, there is no net savings for insurers and the statute fails to carry out its purpose to reduce costs to the system as a whole.
Moreover, the decisions cited by the employee in support of the hearing officer's decision are distinguishable. In Lamonica v. Holmes, 1998 ME 190, 2, 718 A.2d 182, for example, the employee suffered two work-related injuries, but failed to give timely notice of the second work-related injury, and, therefore, recovery was barred for that injury. We concluded that, because timely notice was not provided, the second injury was not compensable, and, therefore, should be treated as a nonwork injury. Id. 3, 718 A.2d at 183. The present case is distinguishable, because in this case, timely notice was provided and the 1988 injury was compensable.
Similarly, in Harding v. Sheridan D. Smith, Inc., 647 A.2d 1193 (Me. 1994), the employee suffered two work-related injuries, but the second was while self-employed. As a self-employed employee, the employee was free to elect to be covered by the Act and, in that case, had elected not to be covered. Id. We held that the second injury, exempt from the Act, should be treated as a nonwork injury. Id. at 1194. The present case is, again, distinguishable because the second injury, the 1988 injury, was plainly a compensable work-related injury.
In Harding we also relied, in part, on the purpose of the Act to provide a full recovery to employees for their injuries. Id. at 1194. In this case, however, the employee has received all of the partial benefits that she is entitled to receive for her 1988 injury, and she is, therefore, not deprived of a "full recovery." Accordingly, there is no support either in the language or policy of the Act, or in our decisions, for the hearing officer to treat the employee's 1988 injury as a nonwork injury following her receipt of 400 weeks of benefits pursuant to former section 55-B.
III.
Because we conclude that the hearing officer erred in treating the 1988 injury as a nonwork injury, we next address the issue of the employer's ongoing liability for the 1984 injury. Subsection 201(6) provides:
6. Prior work-related injuries. If an employee suffers a work-related injury that aggravates, accelerates or combines with the effects of a work-related injury that occurred prior to January 1, 1993 for which compensation is still payable under the law in effect on the date of that prior injury, the employee's rights and benefits for the portion of the resulting disability that is attributable to the prior injury must be determined by the law in effect at the time of the prior injury. 39-A M.R.S.A. ยง 201(6) (Pamph. 2000).
Subsection 201(6) authorizes the hearing officer to determine "the portion of the resulting disability that is attributable" to each injury and to calculate the employer's liability according
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