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Wagner v. AGW Consultants5/24/2005
this particular case, $12,500 has been insufficient to cover workers' attorney fees at the administrative and appellate levels. The dissent proposes, as an alternative to the current scheme it describes as inflexible, that the Legislature maintain an attorney fee limitation but create a separate category of fees on appeal. Dissent, 60. The dissent does not necessarily quarrel with a fee limitation but disagrees on where to draw the line. It remains unclear what the dissent believes would be an appropriate limitation for appellate fees, presumably because of the lack of any evidence in the record to suggest what such a limit should be, or how this alternative would make the fee limitation more flexible. If the legislation provided for a limit of $10,000 in attorney fees at the administrative level and $2,500 on appeal, how would that make the scheme more flexible or less burdensome on the worker? The dissent also fails to address the fact that such fees would still reduce the worker's take-home award.
{29} We find nothing in Worker 's argument to undermine the rationale that by limiting attorney fees at $12,500, Section 52-1-54(I) helps to maximize workers' take-home awards, minimize costs to employers and increase the efficiency of the system for the reasons discussed above. Further, the fact that the Legislature increased the fee limitation to $16,500 in 2003 suggests to us that rather than setting the fee limitation arbitrarily, the Legislature continues to consider the role of attorney fees in order to maximize workers' awards while minimizing litigation costs. Because Worker fails to show the $12,500 fee limitation is not rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, his equal protection challenge must fail.
IV. Due Process Challenge to Fee Limitation
{30} The due process clause in the New Mexico Constitution reads: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law . . .". N.M. Const. art. II, ยง 18. Substantive due process cases inquire whether a statute or government action "`shocks the conscience' or interferes with rights `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'" See State v. Rotherham, 1996-NMSC-048, 122 N.M. 246, 259, 923 P.2d 1131, 1144 (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 746 (1987) (quoted authorities omitted)). Worker and amicus NMTLA argue the fee limitation unconstitutionally interferes with workers' substantive due process rights to access the courts and to an appeal by chilling qualified lawyers from taking their cases. Using the rational basis standard discussed in Section II, we uphold Section 52-1-54(I) under substantive due process unless Worker shows it is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose. Id. 101-02.
{31} For the reasons stated above, Worker and amicus NMTLA fail to show that Section 52-1-54(I) is not rationally related to the legitimate government purposes. See Triplett, 494 U.S. at 723-24 (holding that anecdotal evidence, in the form of attorneys' conclusions that a fee limitation would negatively impact the quality of representation or cause attorneys to leave the field of practice, was insufficient to prove due process violation); Rhodes v. Indus. Comm'n, 868 P.2d 467, 470-71 (Idaho 1993). Under the facts and record of the present challenge, the fee limitation satisfies substantive due process as well as equal protection.
CONCLUSION
{32} We hold that under the record in this case, the WCA attorney fee limitation satisfies state guarantees of equal protection and due process. Section 52-1-54(I) is rationally related to legitimate government purposes, particularly the important goal of maximizing workers' recovery. Assuming th
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