AI Generated Opinion Summaries

This summary was computer-generated without any editorial revision. It is not official, has not been checked for accuracy, and is NOT citable.

Facts

• A worker employed concurrently as a delivery driver for Palo Alto, d/b/a Pizza Hut, and as a horse trainer for a family business was injured in a traffic accident while working for the former. The dispute arose over how to calculate the worker's average weekly wage considering the concurrent employment, specifically the duration each job was held and how this impacts the computation of compensation benefits (paras 5-6).

Procedural History

• [Not applicable or not found]

Parties' Submissions

• Worker-Appellant: Argued for the inclusion of the entire fourteen weeks of employment as a horse trainer in the calculation of the average weekly wage, proposing an "asymmetric option" for calculating wages from both jobs (para 6).
• Employer/Insurer-Appellees: Suggested calculating average wages for a twenty-six-week period, taking the sum of all wages paid during the time employed but objected to the mediator's recommended resolution as it would count time with another employer prior to the worker's employment with them (paras 6-7).

Legal Issues

• Whether the method of calculating a worker's average weekly wage, when the worker held two concurrent jobs for different durations, was applied correctly by the Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) (para 1).
• Whether the award of attorney’s fees to the worker's counsel was justified (para 4).

Disposition

• The Court of Appeals reversed the WCJ's method of calculating the average weekly wage and remanded for recalculation consistent with the opinion that both jobs should be considered separately for their entire duration (para 23).
• The Court affirmed the WCJ’s award of attorney fees to the worker's counsel (para 23).

Reasons

• The Court found that the WCJ erred in calculating the worker's average weekly wage by only considering the nine-week overlap of the two employments. Instead, it held that each job should be calculated separately for its entire duration under NMSA 1978, Section 52-1-20(B)(1), if the period is fewer than twenty-six weeks for any concurrent employer, to compute an aggregate average weekly wage for both employers (paras 3, 16-19). The Court also affirmed the award of attorney fees, finding the WCJ's decision supported by substantial evidence and within the discretion granted by NMSA 1978, Section 52-1-54(E) (paras 20-22).