STEPHEN T. COCHRAN v. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, SC 20940

Compensation Review Board

 Workers' Compensation; Whether Claimant Is Entitled to Temporary Total Disability Benefits under General Statutes § 31-307 (a) Where His Status Commenced When He Was Retired and Had No Intention of Returning to Workforce.  The claimant sustained a compensable back injury in the course of his employment with the respondent in 1994.  In 2003, the claimant, who was then fifty-four years old and had worked for the respondent for thirty-six years, accepted an incentivized early retirement benefits package and had no intention of returning to the workforce.  The claimant's condition deteriorated over time after his retirement, and he applied for temporary total disability benefits pursuant to General Statutes § 31-307 (a).  The statute provides that an employee "shall be paid" temporary total disability benefits if the employee sustains a compensable "injury . . . that results in total incapacity to work."  The Workers' Compensation Commissioner determined that the claimant was entitled to  § 31-307 (a) benefits (1) for the three month period following an April 2013 surgery, because he demonstrated through medical testimony that he was totally disabled during that time and that the surgery was related to his 1994 injury and (2) commencing retroactively to December 30, 2017, because he had established through nonphysician vocational rehabilitation expert testimony that he had become unemployable as of that date.  The respondent appealed to the Compensation Review Board, which affirmed the commissioner's decision.  The respondent then appealed to the Appellate Court (220 Conn. App. 855), which reversed the board's decision.  The Appellate Court held that (1) the plain and unambiguous language of § 31-307 (a) did not entitle the claimant to temporary total disability benefits when he elected early retirement and did not intend to reenter the workforce because it could not be said that his injury resulted in his total incapacity to work or that he had any wage loss or experienced any loss of earning power; (2) the claimant’s argument that § 31-307 (a) provides for an injured worker to be paid a weekly compensation regardless of the reason for leaving the workforce and without having demonstrated any intention to return was unreasonable, as that construction of the statute disregards the prefatory language that requires that an injury result in total incapacity to work in order to be eligible; and (3) awarding temporary total disability benefits under § 31-307 (a) to the claimant who elected to retire with no intention of returning to the workforce would not effectuate the statutory purpose of compensating a claimant for wage loss or loss of earning power.  The claimant filed a petition for certification to appeal, which the Supreme Court granted as to the question of whether the Appellate Court correctly determined that the claimant was not eligible for temporary total disability benefits pursuant to General Statutes § 31-307 (a).