Carol Brewster v. S.D. Warren/Sappi N.A.

Summary

The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine affirmed a divided decision of the Appellate Division of the Workers' Compensation Board awarding death benefits to Carol Brewster, the former spouse of Donald Nadeau, who died in 2020 from complications of a 1985 work injury. The court held that 39 M.R.S.A. § 58 (Pamph. 1984) unambiguously ties eligibility for death benefits to dependency at the time of injury alone, rejecting the employer's argument that dependency must also exist at the time of death. Applying the plain meaning of section 58 together with the statutory definition of 'dependent' and the purposes of the Act, the court concluded that the Legislature tied dependency to the time of injury and knew how to specify a time-of-death trigger when it wanted one, and it declined to add a time-of-death requirement despite the policy arguments against paying benefits to an ex-spouse divorced twenty-three years before the employee's death.