Eligibility for Vocational Rehabilitation under the Maine Workers' Compensation Act: Troubling New Standards

In 1961, section 52 of the Maine Workers' Compensation Act was amended to include a new provision which states that a worker who suffers an industrial injury is entitled to vocational rehabilitation. Under section 52, vocational rehabilitation may be awarded if such services are "necessary and desirable" to restore the injured worker to gainful employment and "reasonable and proper" in scope. The language of section 52 pertaining to vocational rehabilitation has remained essentially unchanged since 1961, despite major developments in the functional, economic, and administrative theories underlying vocational rehabilitation. Narrowly construing section 52, the court in Lancaster v. Cooper Industries and McInnis v. Town of Bar Harbor fashioned standards for eligibility which severely restrict the availability of vocational rehabilitation to injured workers. In support of its holdings the court cited a need to limit employer costs, the restrictive language of the Act, and a perceived legislative intent that vocational rehabilitation not be made widely available. However, a close reading of the Act, combined with a review of current thinking on the function and economics of vocational rehabilitation, reveals that such restrictive holdings were unnecessary. The purpose of this Note is to analyze the Lancaster and McInnis standards in light of the Maine Workers' Compensation Act as a whole, previous Maine case law, and national studies on workers' compensation. The inconsistencies which emerge from this analysis reveal a need for legislative action to provide a workable administrative structure for vocational rehabilitation.