Mouser v. St. Joe Minerals Corp.

709 S.W.2d 950, 1986 Mo. App. LEXIS 4070
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMay 2, 1986
DocketNos. 14180, 14182
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 709 S.W.2d 950 (Mouser v. St. Joe Minerals Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mouser v. St. Joe Minerals Corp., 709 S.W.2d 950, 1986 Mo. App. LEXIS 4070 (Mo. Ct. App. 1986).

Opinion

COMMISSION’S ORDERS AFFIRMED

FLANIGAN, Judge.

This proceeding, under the Workers’ Compensation Law, involves the interplay of the “lump sum payment,” due to a widow in the event of remarriage, § 287.-240(4)(a),1 and the subrogation rights of an employer, under § 287.150.3, when the dependents of the deceased employee effect a recovery against a third person. The issue is whether, under the facts at bar and the statutes then in existence, the recovery relieves the self-insured employer from making the “lump sum payment” to the widow when she remarried after the settlement was effected.

Respondent Marilyn Sue Farmer, now Marilyn Sue Farmer Mouser, and her two minor children, filed a claim, under the Workers’ Compensation Law, against appellant St. Joe Minerals Corporation, a self-insured employer, for death benefits and burial expenses arising out of the death of respondent’s then husband Bobby R. Farmer. Additional claimants were decedent’s two minor children by a prior marriage.

The following are the significant events:

March 23, 1982

The employee was fatally injured under compensable circumstances.

May 10, 1982

The widow and the four children filed the claim for death benefits and burial expenses.

June 2, 1982

The Commission entered an award in favor of the claimants and awarded $2,000 for burial expenses; “for death benefits” the widow was awarded $134 per week “in accordance with § 287.240,” and each of the four minor children was awarded $10 per week, with the payments to begin on March 24, 1982. The award recited: “In accordance with § 287.240 the total amount of compensation under this award shall not exceed $195,000.”

Some unknown date prior to December 2, 1984

A wrongful death action, based on the death of the employee, against a third person, Joy Manufacturing Company, was settled for $750,000. After deduction of an attorney’s fee of $300,000, and $6,000 in expenses, $444,000 was distributable to the beneficiaries, including the widow, of the wrongful death claim.

December 2, 1984

The attorney representing the beneficiaries of the wrongful death action sent a check in the amount of $13,616 to St. Joe “as the amount for repayment to St. Joe as its subrogation interest.”

December 28, 1984

The widow married her present husband.

January 30, 1985

St. Joe advised the Commission of the wrongful death settlement and the remarriage.

February 8, 1985

The Commission entered an “Order Terminating Death Award.” The order recited that St. Joe had filed an application “to end the death award,” together with supporting documents indicating that a third party settlement of $750,000 was effected. The order then reads:

“Death award previously entered in this case be terminated due to the amounts received by the dependents pursuant to a third party settlement in this case. Termination of this award shall not affect the widow’s entitlement to a two-year lump sum in the event of remarriage pursuant to Ikerman v. Koch, 580 S.W.2d 273 (Mo. banc 1979).”

February 15, 1985

The Commission entered an order reciting that the widow had advised the Commission by letter and presentment of her [952]*952marriage certificate that she was married on December 28, 1984, to Jerry Mouser. The order reads, in part:

“The remarriage, as can be seen, predated the [order of February 8, 1985].
Employer shall pay to the widow, Marilyn Sue Farmer Mouser, a lump sum in the amount of $13,936, representing payment of her weekly benefit amount of $134 for a period of two years or 104 weeks. A receipt for compensation paid shall be filed with this Commission. The [order of February 8, 1985] shall otherwise remain in full force.”

St. Joe filed separate appeals to this court from the Commission’s orders of February 8, 1985 and February 15, 1985, as permitted by § 287.495.

St. Joe, the only party to file a brief in this court, asserts that the Commission exceeded its authority in ordering St. Joe to pay $13,936 as a “lump sum payment” under § 287.240 because: (a) the order violates the limit of $195,000 set forth in § 287.240(2) RSMo Supp.1982. (The $195,-000 limit was enacted in 1980 and repealed in 1983); (b) the third party settlement of $750,000 “exceeds the maximum death benefit allowed so that death benefits are terminated and the widow is not thereafter entitled to the lump sum upon remarriage.”

Material portions of statutes, as they existed at the time of the employee’s death and which are pertinent to the issues on this appeal, are set forth below.2

[953]*953The two cases which construe the pertinent statutes and control the disposition of this appeal are Yardley v. Montgomery, 580 S.W.2d 263 (Mo. banc 1979), and Ikerman v. Koch, 580 S.W.2d 273 (Mo. banc 1979). Both involved the remarriage benefit, § 287.240(4)(a), and Ikerman involved the effect of a third party recovery upon the remarriage benefit.

In Yardley the supreme court held that on the remarriage of a deceased employee’s widow, who was entitled to the remarriage benefit, the periodic benefits, to which she would have been entitled if she had not remarried, were to be paid immediately to the dependent children rather than deferred until two years subsequent to the remarriage.

The court held that the remarriage benefit, inserted in § 287.240 in 1974, was not limited by the maximum death benefit compensation of $95 per week set forth in § 287.240.2, RSMo 1975 Supp., and § 287.-160.2, RSMo 1975 Supp. The remarriage benefit constitutes “a separate benefit unrelated to the death benefit installment compensation award.” Yardley, at 270.

Also at 270 the court said:

“There are, in § 287.240 three compensations provided: (1) burial expense, (2) a lump sum remarriage award and (3) a ‘death benefit’ or ‘compensation payable in installments’ not to exceed $95.00 per week. Only the death benefit in subsection 2 is subject to the maximum. The lump sum remarriage payment is not so subject, hence the periodic death benefit to which the widow is entitled had she not remarried which are directed to be divided to the dependent children are also not subject to the maximum limitation. There is no basis in the statute to treat the lump sum payment to the widow as a death benefit subject to the maximum limitation of $95.00 per week in subsection 2. Construing the statute as a whole, the maximum limitation of $95.00 per week is not applicable to burial expense in subsection 1 and the lump sum remarriage payment in subsection 4.”

The court held that the remarriage benefit was not “an advancement of benefits due over the two-year period [which] must be depleted before the periodic benefit due the widow may be redistributed to the children.” Yardley at 271.

In Ikerman

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
709 S.W.2d 950, 1986 Mo. App. LEXIS 4070, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mouser-v-st-joe-minerals-corp-moctapp-1986.