O.C. Longshoreman Wins Precedent-Setting Case

The U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for disabled dockworkers to seek changes in benefits they receive when their health and employment circumstances change.

The court ruled Thursday that a Huntington Beach longshoreman who found a higher-paying job after being hurt may be entitled to receive nominal disability benefits to preserve his right to collect more benefits if his injuries later affect his earning power.

The 6-3 ruling upheld the general legal standard used by the appeals court. However, the justices said the case must be returned to an administrative law judge to determine whether John Rambo himself is entitled to nominal benefits.

“We hold nominal compensation proper when there is a significant possibility that the worker’s wage-earning capacity will fall below the level of his pre-injury wages sometime in the future,” Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court.

“It is likely that Congress intended ‘disability’ to include the injury-related potential for future wage loss,” Souter added. He noted that otherwise, disabled workers who are denied benefits or whose benefits are ended have only one year to seek new benefits.

Rambo’s attorney, Thomas Pierry III, said he plans to seek a ruling from an administrative judge, which could take a year or more.

“We’re kind of back to square one,” he said, but now “we know what the law is.”

The ruling, however, “is a victory for longshoremen in general,” Pierry said.

Rambo was a longshore worker for the Metropolitan Stevedore Co. in Wilmington when he injured his back and leg in 1980.

He filed a disability claim with the federal government and was granted $80.16 a week in benefits for a permanent partial disability, but Metropolitan Stevedore sought to reduce his benefits after Rambo got a job as a crane operator with a different company and his earnings rose to triple what he had earned before the injury.

The decision is the Supreme Court’s second in Rambo’s case. Two years ago, the court used his legal fight to rule that benefits for disabled longshore workers can be reduced if they later find higher-paying work--even if there is no improvement in their condition.

Before the 1995 ruling, it had been uncertain whether the federal law’s provision for modifying benefits due to a “change in conditions” meant a change in physical or economic condition.

After the Supreme Court’s 1995 decision, Rambo’s case returned to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court then ruled that Rambo’s benefits should not be canceled but lowered to a nominal level.

Souter’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Dissenting were Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing for the three, O’Connor said awarding nominal benefits would circumvent the one-year time limit to seek a change in benefits.

Times staff writer Patrice Apodaca contributed to this report.