Citation Numbers: 161 N.E. 315, 248 N.Y. 18
Judges: CARDOZO, Ch. J.
Filed Date: 5/1/1928
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 1/12/2023
Appellant's claim to exemption from execution against moneys heretofore paid to him as compensation for injury rests upon this provision of section 33, Workmen's Compensation Law: "Compensation or benefits due under this chapter, shall not be assigned, released or commuted except as provided by this chapter, and shall be exempt from all claims of creditors and from levy, execution, and attachment or other remedy for recovery or collection of a debt, which exemption may not be waived. Compensation and benefits shall be paid only to employees or their dependents."
No property is exempt from execution unless some statute makes it so, and the burden is upon the person claiming exemption to bring his property within some statutory exception. (Baker v.Brintnall, 52 Barb. 188.) The question whether any one shall receive the privilege *Page 26 of escaping payment of a debt is one of policy and, therefore, one essentially for legislative action. The lawmaking body has seen fit to continue to impose upon one recovering a judgment in an action for personal injuries the duty to discharge his pecuniary obligations to those who have trusted him. It may relieve him of that duty just as it may lighten the financial burdens of one obtaining compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Law. We ought not to hold that the Legislature has done so in either case unless its language clearly indicates such an intention.
I can read in the act no such legislative purpose. The compensation and benefits which are exempt are only those which are "due." The statute does not deal with those which have been paid. Compensation and benefits which are due are not merely made free from claims of all kinds; the workman himself is forbidden to assign them or to waive his exemption from execution. We would have to go to extraordinary lengths before we could hold that the statute purposes to prevent any one from assigning compensation after it has been paid to him. How could an injured workman support himself, if he were prohibited from assigning his own money and if his creditors could not compel him to pay what he owes them? Clearly, to my mind, this section forbids assignments and waivers of exemption from execution only so long as the money remains in the custody of the State or the employer. This idea is reinforced by the last sentence in that part of the section above quoted: "Compensation and benefits shall be paid only to employees or their dependents," and the further provision in section 33 directing, in case of the death of an injured employee to whom any compensation was "due" at the time of his death, that such compensation shall be "payable" to certain designated relatives. All through section 33 the word "due" seems to mean "payable." Compensation can no longer be due or payable after it *Page 27 has been paid. The purpose of section 33 impresses me as directing a mode of procedure by which the State or the employer may be enabled to get rid of compensation, which is due and payable, simply by paying it over to the person to whom it has been awarded or to whom it is payable under the statute. The agent, public or private, who makes the disbursement shall not be harassed or obstructed by the imposition of a duty to determine at his peril the validity of assignments, third party orders, executions or any kind of document purporting to constitute legal process. He is not to be turned into a stakeholder but is to be a disbursing agent and nothing else. After his function as such has been discharged, the beneficiary may do with his compensation as he wills. The money belongs to him and, in the absence of a clear statute of exemption, it is, like other property, subject to execution. This policy may not embody such humanity and benevolence as we may think the State ought to dispense to the victims of industrial casualties. The Legislature is free to change its present policy. Our duty is to interpret the law as we find it.
In this statute, the word "due" is, I think, used by the Legislature in the sense in which that and cognate words have been defined by the courts. In Bull v. Case (
POUND, CRANE, LEHMAN and KELLOGG, JJ., concur with CARDOZO, Ch. J.; O'BRIEN, J., dissents in opinion; ANDREWS, J., not sitting.
Orders reversed, etc.
Broward v. Jacksonville Medical Center , 690 So. 2d 589 ( 1997 )
Masler v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. , 894 S.W.2d 633 ( 1995 )
In Re Nolen , 65 B.R. 1014 ( 1986 )
Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co. v. John J. Reynolds, Inc. , 178 F. Supp. 655 ( 1959 )