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Aranda v. Industrial Commission of Arizona9/12/2000
The court further specified that the statute at issue was not a property tax, but rather an excise tax, and held the lease to be an antecedent fact. In the instant cases, the State Fund contends that Tower supports the proposition that the injury and award are mere antecedent facts and that the statute does no more than relate to those facts, but does not regulate them. We disagree because, in Tower, the statute functioned prospectively to tax income after the effective date because the receipt of rentals was the taxable event, not the signing of the lease contract.
The State Fund's analogy to Tower fails for two additional reasons. First, taxation of income differs in both kind and purpose from a suspension of workers' compensation benefits. Second, a claimant's injury and workers' compensation award are not mere antecedent facts to which the statute "relates" but are the operative events which result in vesting the award. Tower is inapposite. Vested workers' compensation benefits constitute property.
The parties also cite cases from other jurisdictions that have decided this issue in different ways. See, e.g., State ex rel. Brown v. Industrial Comm'n, 623 N.E.2d 55 (Ohio 1993) (holding claimant's entitlement to be substantive right measured by statutes in force on date of injury and subsequent statute regulating benefits payable during incarceration deemed inapplicable); Miles v. F.D. Shay Contractor, Inc., 626 So. 2d 74, 77-78 (La. Ct. App. 1993) (holding statute suspending benefits during incarceration inapplicable because statute not in effect on date of injury); but cf. In re Connolly's Case, 642 N.E.2d 296 (Mass. 1994) (holding workers' compensation statute terminating benefits if claimant is incarcerated to be procedural); Though we find these cases informative, Arizona law fully supports our decision. Nothing in our statutes or judicial decisions suggests that a vested property right, embodied in a final workers' compensation award, may be suspended by subsequent legislative enactment.
In sum, the final Industrial Commission Award created a vested right in the claimants to receive the monthly disability benefits due as a result of lost earning capacity. Both the Aranda and Everett awards were final prior to the effective date of A.R.S. section 23-1031. Claimants possessed an existing, enforceable right, in property, to receive the monthly compensation payments prior to the effective date of the statute. Therefore, the substantive property right in workers' compensation payments vested once the Industrial Commission's Findings and Award became final.
The Legislature "may certainly enact laws that apply to rights vested before the date of the statute. Such laws, however, may only change the legal consequences of future events." San Carlos, 193 Ariz. at 205, 972 P.2d at 189. But we are not dealing here with future events. The claimants must have the opportunity to avert the loss of benefits. The last moment this would be possible, in the context of conviction and incarceration, is the date of the criminal offense. That is the last moment that claimants may choose to alter their behavior to avoid the application of section 23-1031. Section 23-1031, thus, cannot be applied to Aranda and Everett whose awards were final and whose offenses were committed prior to the effective date of the statute. On the record before us, we need not address the prospective application of the statute, nor any constitutional claims arising therefrom.
CONCLUSION
Section 23-1031 may not be applied in the instant cases. We therefore vacate the appellate opinion in Aranda and reverse the Commission's findings and award applying section 23-1031 to him. We affirm
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