“The presumptions employed in KRS 342.732 bear both a direct and rational connection to the medical realities concerning the seriousness of the degree of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis present in a given worker.”
How later courts described this case
- “The presumptions employed in KRS 342.732 bear both a direct and rational connection to the medical realities concerning the seriousness of the degree of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis present in a given worker.”
- “The presumptions employed in KRS 342.782 bear both a direct and rational connection to the medical realities concerning the seriousness of the degree of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis present in a given worker.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Abrogated on other grounds by Vision Mining, Inc. v. Gardner, 2011 Ky. LEXIS 177 (2011)
Hamilton v. Int'l Union of Operating Eng'rs , 262 S.W.2d 695, 700 (Ky. 1953) ; see also Ky. Harlan Coal Co. v. Holmes , 872 S.W.2d 446, 451 (Ky. 1994), abrogated on other grounds by Vision Mining, Inc. v. Gardner , 364 S.W.3d 455 (Ky. 2011) (stating "the Commonwealth's power to legislate public policy in the area of employer/employee relations derives from its police power[ ]"); Commonwealth v. Reinecke Coal Min.
The opinion
LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
First of all, I dissent for the reasons stated by Chief Justice Stephens’ dissent regarding violation of Kentucky Constitution §§59 and 60.
Further, I dissent because the statute in question violates Kentucky Constitution § 2, which states:
“Absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.”
A statute mandating a disability award of 100% for x-ray findings in a condition which is not necessarily disabling, is unconstitutionally arbitrary. The medical evidence here is that while a person with such findings should be advised to cease working in the mines, *460 such a person is not 100% disabled for other work.
A conclusive presumption mandated by the General Assembly makes a question of fact (disability in fact) a matter of law. This law provides total disability benefits to coal workers simply because they have certain x-ray findings, and further does so to the exclusion of other workers with the same condition. All of the “legislative findings” in the world cannot turn wine into blood, or make x-ray finding conclusive proof of total disability, when the medical evidence says otherwise.
Proof of disability in fact is the only statutory criterion the General Assembly can use in awarding benefits to coal miners without being unconstitutionally arbitrary in setting the disability standard. Cf. Tablet v. Wallace, Ky., 704 S.W.2d 179 (1985).
STEPHENS, C.J., joins this dissent.