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Color Country Management v. Labor Commission12/6/2001
Comm'n, 2000 UT 66, -19, 7 P.3d 777; Morton Int'l, Inc. v. Auditing Div., 814 P.2d 581, 587-89 (Utah 1991); Velarde v. Board of Review, 831 P.2d 123, 125 (Utah Ct. App. 1992). "Due process challenges are questions of law that we review applying a correction of error standard." West Valley City v. Roberts, 1999 UT App 358, , 993 P.2d 252. Whether there was a final order at the time the abstract was issued involves the construction of statutory provisions and is a question of law which we review for correctness. See Esquivel, 2000 UT 66 at .
ANALYSIS
We first address Color Country's claim that the Commission interpreted section 35-1-67 incorrectly by requiring Commission approval of a reemployment plan. Color Country also argues the Commission erred by concluding that the reemployment plan must include subsistence payments and that the plan was unreasonable.
According to Color Country, the hearing called for in section 35-1-67 is merely to determine whether the reemployment plan is or has been successful, and it does not confer on the Commission the authority to approve or disapprove the reemployment plan.
Section 35-1-67 allows an employer to submit a reemployment plan for an employee who is seeking permanent total disability benefits:
(6) (a) A finding by the commission of permanent total disability is not final, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties, until:
(ii) the employer or its insurance carrier submits to the commission a reemployment plan as prepared by a qualified rehabilitation provider reasonably designed to return the employee to gainful employment or the employer or its insurance carrier provides the commission notice that the employer or its insurance carrier will not submit a plan; and
(iii) the commission, after notice to the parties, holds a hearing, unless otherwise stipulated, to consider evidence regarding rehabilitation and to review any reemployment plan submitted by the employer or its insurance carrier under Subsection (6)(a)(ii). Utah Code Ann. ยง 35-1-67 (1994) (emphasis added).
When interpreting statutory provisions, we are guided by our primary purpose of giving effect to the legislative intent, and we first turn to the plain language of the statute to divine this intent. See Regal Ins. Co. v. Bott, 2001 UT 71, , 31 P.3d 524.
The verb "review" is defined as: "to go over or examine critically or deliberately"; "to go over with critical examination in order to discover excellences or defects"; and "to make a formal or official examination of the state of" something. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1944 (1986). This meaning, taken together with the requirement that the employer "submit" the plan, that the commission "consider" evidence, and that the plan be "reasonably designed to return the employee to gainful employment" convinces us that the plain meaning that the Legislature intended by its use of the word "review" in section 35-1-67(6) was to have the Commission independently evaluate and approve the employer's reemployment plan. We think it is clear that to require an entity to submit something to an agency charged with implementation of a remedial act and ask the agency to review it for reasonableness requires an evaluation and the agency's approval. The alternative construction urged by Color Country, if carried to its logical extreme, would give employers who sought to avoid paying compensation the ability to draft a plan that an employee had no chance of fulfilling and then deny benefits because the employee was not cooperating with reemployment efforts. This would be in direct contravention to the larger purpose and spirit of the Workers
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