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Anderson v. Longmont Toyota12/6/2004
cause of a wage loss suffered upon termination for which the employee was responsible. In any event, a lone comment, made during a committee hearing, by a supporter rather than a drafter, sponsor, or even legislator voting on the bill, does not legislative history make. On the contrary, the only meaningful legislative history of these amendments -- the clear motivation to overturn a particular court ruling and the nature of the ruling to be overturned -- demonstrates a legislative intent to end the practice of further case-by-case inquiry into contributing factors, once an employee's responsibility for his own termination has been established.
It is hardly surprising, however, that discussion of a bill openly designed to overturn the holding of PDM Molding would not address wage loss from a subsequent employer because even PDM Molding never recognized an entitlement to benefits as a result of an employee's incapacity to find or keep employment from a different employer. To have done so, as the majority does today, would have amounted to a substantial (if subtle) departure from the philosophy of our workers' compensation scheme. Rather than a system of compensation for employees who become unable to perform work for their employer as the result of on-the-job injuries, the scheme is converted into one in which an employer takes on the obligation of insuring that his employees will not lose their ability to earn a comparable wage in the work force generally, as the result of on-the-job injury . If it were not already clear, I believe these amendments demonstrate an incontrovertible legislative intent that an employer in this jurisdiction not be required to bear the risk that former employees who have voluntarily left his employ in search of better opportunities may, at some point in time, be administratively determined to be incapable, as the result of a previous on-the-job injury, of finding or keeping comparable-paying employment with another employer.
Notwithstanding the majority's paean to legislative intent, whenever a straightforward interpretation of words chosen by the legislature itself is rejected on the grounds that it "is contrary to the presumption that the General Assembly intended a just and reasonable result," maj. op. at 21, one must at least question whether it is actually the intent of the legislature being discovered. Because I do not believe the words of the amendment admit of the construction given them by the majority, or that legislative history would support such a construction if they did, I respectfully dissent.
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