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Steinberg v. South Dakota Department of Military and Veterans Affairs3/15/2000
f which the employment is a major contributing cause," and left it at that. However, the legislature instead chose to leave "arising out of" in the statute, and added the requirement that the resulting condition from the injury must be established with medical evidence and the additional subsections. "The legislature does not intend to insert surplusage in its enactments." National Farmers, 534 NW2d at 65 (citing Revier v. School Bd. of Sioux Falls, 300 NW2d 55, 57 (SD 1981)).
[ ] It also seems clear from subsections (b) and (c) that the legislature was concerned with claimant's being able to prove their medical conditions, whether they be caused by the work-related incident, or combined with a pre-existing disease or condition. "A statute must be read as a whole and effect must be given to all its provisions." Id. (citing Beitelspacher v. Winther, 447 NW2d 347, 351 (SD 1989); Hartpence v. Youth Forestry Camp, 325 NW2d 292, 295 (SD 1982) and State v. Heisinger, 252 NW2d 899, 903 (SD 1977)). The harmonious interpretation here is to read the new phrase "major contributing cause" to apply only to the requirement of proving the "condition complained of."
[ ] Although SDCL 62-1-1(7) was amended in 1995, the overall statutory determination was left intact that workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy against employers for all on-the-job injuries to workers except those injuries intentionally inflicted by the employer. SDCL 62-3-2; Harn v. Continental Lumber Co., 506 NW2d 91, 95 (SD 1993). To now find that the legislature has raised the element of the employment's connection to an injury to a standard higher than proximate cause or the "arising out of" standard, would be at best to essentially repeal South Dakota's no fault workers' compensation act in favor of a new statutory administrative fault-based tort system, and to repudiate all the goals and purposes the act intended to address. At its worst it would act as an absolute bar to recovery by workers against their employers injured on the job who cannot establish employer fault under the test advocated by DMVA. These workers would be denied workers' compensation under this standard and would be denied the right to sue in tort by SDCL 62-3-2. "Compensation acts are sui generis, and care must be taken not to defeat their purpose by applying, through long judicial habit, concepts belonging to fundamentally different fields of litigation." Olson v. Trinity Lodge No. 282, 32 NW2d 255, 257 (Minn 1948) (citing Hanson v. Robitshek-Schneider Co., 209 Minn 596, 297 NW 19 (Minn 1941)).
[ ] When one interpretation "would functionally annul the law, the cardinal purpose of statutory construction - ascertaining legislative intent - ought not be limited to simply reading a statute's bare language; we must also reflect upon the purpose of the enactment; the matter sought to be corrected and the goal to be attained." DeSmet Ins. of South Dakota v. Gibson, 1996 SD 102, , 552 NW2d 98, 100 (citations omitted). We stated the general purpose and goal of workers' compensation law in Keil v. Nelson, 355 NW2d 525 (SD 1984):
The general purposes of workmen's compensation legislation, therefore, is the substitution in place of the doubtful contest for a recovery based on proof of the employer's negligence and the absence of the common law defenses of a right for the employees to relief based on the fact of employment, practically automatic and certain, expeditious and independent of proof of fault and for the employers a liability which is limited and determinate. Id. at 530. (emphasis added).
The danger in accepting the circuit court's interpretation of SDCL 62-1-1(7) is that it moves the standard of proving a compensable work-re
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