Opinion
23-0018
10-25-2023
DEBRA STUART, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DICKTEN MASCH PLASTICS, LLC and EMPLOYERS PREFERRED INS. CO., Defendants-Appellees.
John P. Dougherty of Lawyer, Dougherty & Palmer, P.L.C., West Des Moines, for appellant. Nathan R. McConkey of Huber, Book, Lanz &McConkey, PLLC, West Des Moines, for appellees.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Michael D. Huppert, Judge.
Debra Stuart appeals from the district court's ruling on judicial review affirming the workers' compensation commissioner's denial of her reviewreopening petition. REVERSED AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.
John P. Dougherty of Lawyer, Dougherty & Palmer, P.L.C., West Des Moines, for appellant.
Nathan R. McConkey of Huber, Book, Lanz &McConkey, PLLC, West Des Moines, for appellees.
Heard by Bower, C.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
LANGHOLZ, Judge.
Under Iowa's workers' compensation statutes, an injured worker receiving benefits can seek to reopen her award or settlement to obtain more benefits by showing a change in her condition-even a purely economic change-proximately caused by her original injury. See Iowa Code § 86.14(2) (2020); E.N.T. Assocs. v. Collentine, 525 N.W.2d 827, 829 (Iowa 1994). But what if the claimed economic change is that the worker cannot find work after being laid off in a plant closure by an employer who had been accommodating her disability? The workers' compensation commissioner here concluded that when a worker loses her job in a plant closure, she cannot show the required economic change regardless of any other factors preventing her from finding a new job. And so, the commissioner denied Debra Stuart's review-reopening petition.
But the Iowa Supreme Court has not interpreted our statute to establish any such bright-line rule. A worker may be entitled to reopening-even where one cause of the economic change is unrelated to the injury-so long as the continued inability to work is proximately caused by the injury. We thus reverse and remand for the commissioner to apply the proper legal standard to decide whether Stuart has shown that she is entitled to reopening here.
I.
Over ten years ago, Debra Stuart fell and injured herself while working at Dickten Masch Plastics, LLC. She eventually settled her claim for workers' compensation benefits with Dickten Masch and its insurance carrier, Employers Preferred Insurance Company. The parties entered into an agreement for settlement that Stuart was entitled to permanent partial disability of thirty-five percent of the body as a whole, resulting in weekly benefits of $403.38 for 175 weeks. See Iowa Code § 85.35(2). And the settlement was approved by the commissioner.
Stuart kept working full-time at Dickten Masch after her injury. But instead of her previous lead operator role, she worked in a less physically demanding job inspecting light parts. Generally, other employees would bring boxes of the parts to her for inspection while she remained seated. Or she would wheel herself in her chair over to a box and drag it to where she needed it with her cane. Dickten Masch allowed her-but not other employees-to take breaks to get up and walk around every thirty or forty-five minutes.
According to Stuart, Dickten Masch created this job for her as an accommodation to her disability. And she said she would not have agreed to the settlement if she could not continue working in the accommodated job. But the settlement agreement included no text addressing her continued employment or accommodation by Dickten Masch.
About three years after the settlement, Dickten Masch closed the plant where Stuart worked, and she lost her job. Stuart then filed a review-reopening petition seeking to increase workers' compensation benefits. In briefing and at a contested case hearing, she argued that her economic condition had changed because she lost her heavily accommodated job and could not find new employment. She pointed to her more than two dozen applications that resulted in only three responses, all of which were fruitless once the employers learned of her disability. Dickten Masch countered with expert opinion from a vocational rehabilitation counselor that she was still employable and had not been applying for suitable jobs. Stuart also argued that her physical condition had changed, serving as an alternate basis for reopening her settlement. But she does not advance that claim on appeal.
The deputy workers' compensation commissioner rejected both arguments and denied Stuart's review-reopening petition. The deputy acknowledged that a purely economic change could be a basis for reopening and that Stuart had shown that her economic condition had changed. But the deputy explained that "the reason her employment ended was because the entire plant closed and this was not related to the original work injury." And the deputy reasoned that any accommodation in her lost job was irrelevant because her "ability to earn in the competitive job market without regard to the accommodation furnished by one's present employer was to be taken into account" when she entered into the settlement. Thus, the deputy concluded that "the facts and circumstances related to her earning capacity remain the same and were known at the time of the original settlement" and Stuart failed to show "an economic change of condition related to the work injury." The deputy did not weigh or analyze Stuart's or Dickten Masch's other evidence about Stuart's current ability to find a job after her layoff.
Stuart appealed to the workers' compensation commissioner, and he affirmed the deputy's decision without further analysis. Stuart then brought this judicial review proceeding in district court. She mainly argued that the commissioner "misinterpreted controlling case law" interpreting the reviewreopening statute in denying her petition because she was laid off in a plant closure. The district court also affirmed. This appeal followed.
II
A judicial review proceeding is appellate in nature-even in the district court. See Black v. Univ. of Iowa, 362 N.W.2d 459, 462 (Iowa 1985). And on appeal, we apply the same statutory standard of review of the agency action as the district court. See Carreras v. Iowa Dep't of Transp., 977 N.W.2d 438, 444 (Iowa 2022). A court "shall reverse" an agency action "if it determines that substantial rights of the person seeking judicial relief have been prejudiced because the agency action is . . . [b]ased upon an erroneous interpretation of a provision of law whose interpretation has not clearly been vested by a provision of law in the discretion of the agency." Iowa Code § 17A.19(10)(c); see also Green v. N. Cent. Iowa Reg'l Solid Waste Auth., 989 N.W.2d 144, 147 (Iowa 2023) ("In reviewing the commissioner's interpretation of a statute, we apply a correction-of-errors-at-law standard."). Yet when reviewing the "application of law to fact," a court must reverse only when the action is "[b]ased upon an irrational, illogical, or wholly unjustifiable application." Iowa Code § 17A.19(10)(m).
At the start, we must resolve the parties' dispute over which of these two standards of review applies here. Dickten Masch contends that Stuart's "true contention on appeal is that the Agency's application of the relevant law to the facts of this case was in error." But Stuart's main argument on judicial review- and the one on which we decide this appeal-is that the commissioner misinterpreted the requirements of the review-reopening statute as interpreted by governing supreme court precedent. This is a pure legal question properly reviewed for correction of errors at law under section 17A.19(10)(c), without any deference to the district court's or commissioner's decisions. See Green, 989 N.W.2d at 147; Carreras, 977 N.W.2d at 444; see also Iowa Ins. Inst. v. Core Grp. of Iowa Ass'n for Just., 867 N.W.2d 58, 65 (Iowa 2015).
III.
Section 86.14 of the Iowa Code authorizes the workers' compensation commissioner "to reopen an award for payments or an agreement for settlement" if "the condition of the employee warrants an end to, diminishment of, or increase of compensation so awarded or agreed upon." Iowa Code § 86.14(2).