Cite as: 505 U. S. 469 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Health Review Comm'n, supra, we need not resolve the difficult issues regarding deference which would be lurking in other circumstances.
As a preliminary matter, the natural reading of the statute supports the Court of Appeals' conclusion that a person entitled to compensation need not be receiving compensation or have had an adjudication in his favor. Both in legal and general usage, the normal meaning of entitlement includes a right or benefit for which a person qualifies, and it does not depend upon whether the right has been acknowledged or adjudicated. It means only that the person satisfies the prerequisites attached to the right. See generally Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 577 (1972) (discussing property interests protected by the Due Process Clause and contrasting an entitlement to an expectancy); Black's Law Dictionary 532 (6th ed. 1990) (defining "entitle" as "To qualify for; to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming"). Cowart suffered an injury which by the terms of the LHWCA gave him a right to compensation from his employer. He became a person entitled to compensation at the moment his right to recovery vested, not when his employer admitted liability, an event even yet to happen.
If the language of § 33(g)(1), in isolation, left any doubt, the structure of the statute would remove all ambiguity. First, and perhaps most important, when Congress amended § 33(g) in 1984, it added the explicit forfeiture features of § 33(g)(2), which specify that forfeiture occurs "regardless of whether the employer or the employer's insurer has made payments or acknowledged entitlement to benefits under this chapter." We read that phrase to modify the entirety of subsection (g)(2), including the beginning part discussing the written-approval requirement of paragraph (1). The BRB did not find this amendment controlling because the quoted language is not an explicit modification of subsection (1). This is a strained reading of what Congress intended. Subsection (g)(2) leaves little doubt that the contemplated for-
477
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