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D. Corso Excavating3/17/2000
When it ended a legislative program allowing employers of previously injured employees to obtain reimbursement of certain workers' compensation payments, did the General Assembly intend for the repeal to have a retroactive effect, and, if so, is such legislation constitutional? In 1998, the General Assembly repealed G.L. 1956 § 28-37-4, entitled "Second injury payments." See P.L. 1998, ch. 105, § 5. This statute allowed qualifying employers and their workers' compensation insurers to obtain reimbursement for certain compensation paid to previously disabled employees who, after their reemployment, became disabled again because of work-related injuries. The source for this reimbursement was an administrative account (Second Injury Fund or fund) within the state's general fund. See § 28-37-1.
This petition for certiorari requires us to determine whether the General Assembly intended its 1998 repeal of § 28-37-4 to eliminate reimbursement benefits for those qualifying employers who, before the repeal, paid workers compensation to previously disabled employees and submitted claims for reimbursement thereof, but whose claims were not yet accepted nor adjudged entitled to reimbursement when the repeal became effective. Based upon the plain language of the repealing legislation, we answer this question in the affirmative. We also hold that, when, as here, the beneficiaries of legislated economic benefits do not enjoy a protected-property interest, a vested-substantive entitlement, or an enforceable-contractual right to receive such benefits from the state before the effective date of the statute's repeal, the General Assembly not only may repeal the legislation that provided for these benefits, but it may also apply the repeal retrospectively to pending claims for such benefits. And even though the repeal frustrates the reimbursement expectations of those employers and insurers who paid workers' compensation in reliance upon the presumed continued availability of the legislation's reimbursement benefits, its retroactive application does not violate their constitutional rights.
Facts and Travel
On May 26, 1989, employee Louis Mosca, Sr. (Mosca) sustained a left knee injury in the course of his employment with petitioner D. Corso Excavating, Inc. (Corso). Corso's workers' compensation insurer, petitioner Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (Liberty), filed a memorandum of agreement accepting liability for Mosca's disability as of May 27, 1989. Weekly workers' compensation payments to Mosca began and continued for ten years thereafter.
Mosca had injured his knee previously, in 1962 and 1978, while he was working for different employers. Moreover, he had undergone three surgeries to the knee, and was still receiving medical treatment for this injury until a few months before he joined Corso as an employee in 1988. Corso knew about Mosca's previous knee problems when it hired him. Although Mosca again reinjured his knee in 1989, neither Corso nor Liberty notified the Director of the Department of Labor and Training (director) until August 1993 of a potential § 28-37-4 reimbursement claim against the Second Injury Fund arising from Liberty's disability payments to Mosca. Thereafter, on August 31, 1993, Liberty submitted its reimbursement claim. On December 23, 1994, the director denied the claim, and petitioners filed suit in the Workers' Compensation Court to obtain reimbursement. The trial judge dismissed the claim as untimely in 1996 and, in a two-to-one opinion, a panel of the Appellate Division affirmed this ruling. Corso and Liberty then petitioned this Court for certiorari. While the petition was pending, the General Assembly repealed § 28-37-4. We then issued a writ of
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