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Banegas v. State Industrial Insurance System3/16/2001
statutes included putative or common law wives.
Prior to 1993, it is conceivable that this court similarly could have liberally construed NRS 616C.505(2) and concluded that, because their relationship bore a resemblance to that of a married couple, Annabelle was Robert's "wife" and was entitled to death benefits as a surviving spouse. However, the Legislature's adoption of NRS 616A.010 in 1993, a year before Robert's death, clearly prohibits Annabelle from being included in the definition of surviving spouse based on an analysis similar to that applied in West, Burgess, or Dawson because the Nevada Legislature expressly repudiated the liberal construction of the industrial insurance statutes with the adoption of NRS 616A.010. Moreover, the Legislature adopted subsection 13 of NRS 616C.505 in 1993, which clearly defines "surviving spouse" as a "surviving husband or wife who was married to the employee at the time of the employee's death." When Robert died in 1994, he and Annabelle were not married. Thus, Annabelle is not Robert's surviving spouse for purposes of receiving death benefits pursuant to NRS 616C.505(2).
CONCLUSION
We conclude that the Legislature intended NRS 616C.505 to provide death benefits in descending order of entitlement to specified dependents standing in certain legally recognized relationships to the deceased employee. This determination leads to the further conclusion that the Legislature intended NRS 616C.505(8) to provide death benefits for those who are not conclusively presumed to be totally dependent, but who have a legally recognized relationship to, and are partially dependent upon, the deceased employee when there is no surviving spouse or dependent children and no wholly dependent parents or siblings. Accordingly, we affirm the order of the district court denying the petition for judicial review.
YOUNG, AGOSTI and LEAVITT, JJ., concur.
MAUPIN, C.J., with whom SHEARING and ROSE, JJ., agree, dissenting:
This case is one of pure statutory construction. If the Nevada workers' compensation death benefit provision at issue here is unambiguous, it is our responsibility to interpret it in accordance with its plain meaning. Only when an ambiguity has been identified are we permitted to resort to other rules of statutory construction. Because I believe NRS 616C.505 is not ambiguous, I do not agree that the omission of certain constraints on claims for dependent benefits under NRS 616C.505 mandates that we affirm the decision made by the district court.
It is tempting to draw an analogy to the Nevada wrongful death statute. NRS 41.085 restricts wrongful death tort claim eligibility to persons eligible to inherit under our laws of intestate succession, i.e., legal heirs. However, NRS 616C.505, our workers' compensation death benefit provision, is not as restrictive as the wrongful death statute in its enumeration of persons eligible to pursue claims.
The full 66 2/3 percent benefit payable under NRS 616C.505 is payable first to the surviving spouse until death or remarriage, then to the surviving children equally until each reaches the age of eighteen years, and then to wholly dependent parents and siblings in defined percentages. It is only then that subsection eight of NRS 616C.505 comes into play requiring that, " n all other cases involving a question of total or partial dependency[,] (a) he extent of the dependency must be determined." Thus, in my view, NRS 616C.505(8) expressly provides that other non-enumerated factual dependencies can be considered for death benefit eligibility.
In such cases, however, a threshold determination of total or partial dependency must be made
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