Brown v. Rosenberger

In Brown v. Rosenberger, 723 A.2d 745 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1999), Brown, a state trooper, was injured in a car accident while performing her duties in 1995. The Commonwealth paid Brown Heart and Lung Act benefits during her incapacity. Brown was also eligible to receive workers' compensation and those benefits were paid over to the Commonwealth. Brown, seeking to plead, prove and recover the amounts paid under the two statutes in her civil action against the other driver, argued before common pleas that since Act 44 restored an employee's right to recover workers' compensation benefits in a third-party action as well as an employer's right to subrogate against that recovery, the Commonwealth should be treated identically to a workers' compensation carrier with respect to benefits paid under the Heart and Lung Act. The defendant driver argued, however, that Act 44's repealer applied only to workers' compensation benefits and, therefore, Brown could not recover any benefits paid under that act. In addressing the issue, common pleas noted that, although a plaintiff historically had the right to plead loss of wages and medical bills in an action to recover damages sustained in a car accident and the employer had a concurrent right to subrogation, 8 such common law rights were supplanted by the enactment of the MVFRL in 1984, including former Sections 1720 and 1722. According to common pleas: Because the legislature was silent as to whether a benefit provider under the Heart and Lung Act was subject to the same preclusionary effect of former Section 1720 of the MVFRL, the Commonwealth Court took up the issue in Fulmer . . . . There, the Court held that "benefits received under the Heart and Lung Act effectively replace workmen's compensation benefits for those employees covered by its provisions." The clear effect of this holding was to treat Heart and Lung Act benefits the same as workers' compensation benefits for purposes of the prohibitions to subrogation and pleading as found in sections 1720 and 1722 of the MVFRL. Given the virtual common identity accorded to the above benefits (and by necessary inference the benefit providers) can defendants now claim that the common identity be severed and disparate treatment be accorded to injured employees who have different employers? It is clear that by virtue of the repeal of the prohibition of Sections 1720 and 1722 by Act 44, the pre-1984 principle of equity and unjust enrichment must again operate to allow recovery against a third-party tortfeasor for all losses sustained, and must also allow a benefit provider to be subrogated to any recovery of benefits. The distinction between an employer under the Heart and Lung Act and an employer under other benefit provider schemes is irrelevant for these purposes.