Green v. Carr Lowery Glass Company, Inc. (ct. of Appeals)

Filed April 13, 2007 – Opinion by Judge Irma Raker

The Court of Appeals considered whether, under the Workers’ Compensation Act, a claimant whose hearing has been damaged as a result of his occupation is entitled to have hearing aids provided by his employer/insurer, even though he does not meet the criteria for monetary compensation under the Act. The Court held that the claimant is not eligible for medical benefits, i.e. hearing aids, unless he mets the criteria for eligibility for compensation under the Act.

Thus the Court affirmed the Court of Special Appeals, which had affirmed the circuit court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer/insurer.

The full opinion is available in PDF.

Thomas v. Giant Food, LLC (Ct. of Special Appeals)

Filed April 9, 2007. Opinion by Judge Deborah S. Eyler.

On appeal from the grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer ("Giant") against a former worker ("Thomas"), affirming the denial of Thomas' claim by the Workers' Compensation Commission (the "Commission"), the Court AFFIRMED the decision below.

Thomas was injured while at work at Giant, during a period in which he was employed both by Giant and in a second job. The injury was severe enough to preclude Thomas from continuing to work at Giant, but he was able to continue the more sedentary second job. Thomas filed with the Commission for temporary partial disability, which was opposed by Giant because his weekly earnings from his second job exceeded his average weekly wage from Giant. The Commission agreed, and Thomas' appeal to the Circuit Court for Prince George's County was equally unavailing.

On appeal, Thomas advanced what the Court characterized as an "equity" argument: that the wages from the second job should not be considered in calculating his "wage earning capacity", or in the alternative the second job should be included as well in the "average weekly wage". Otherwise, since the wages from the second job exceeded the average weekly wage received from Giant, there would be no compensation, and that was contrary to the social purpose of the workers' compensation laws.

The Court noted that Worker's Compensation is purely a statutory remedy, and therefore any remedy is limited to that provided by the terms of the statute. Here, the statute clearly provides that "wage earning capacity" includes not only income from the injury-producing job but also other jobs, and "average weekly wage" only includes wages from the injury-producing job. Since Thomas' "wage earning capacity" exceeded his "average weekly wage", no compensation for temporary partial disability was due per the relevant provisions in the statute.

The Court noted other provisions in which the legislature had explicitly included or excluded other income in calculating eligibility for or the amount of benefits, but had not done so there. Unless and until the legislature sees fit to change the statute, the Court found that the result arrived at by the Commission and the court below was correct.

The opinion is available in PDF format.

Chance v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Ct. of Special Appeals)

Filed April 4, 2007--Opinion by Judge Patrick Woodward.

Appellant was injured during the course of her employment with WMATA. She filed a timely claim with the Worker's Compensation Commission, which WMATA did not contest. Due to a change in legal counsel and an incorrect date of injury on her claim, Appellant, through her new counsel, filed a second claim for the same injury with the Commission. When the error was discovered, Appellant moved to dismisse one of the claims. Because of another clerical error, however, her motion sought to dismiss the first claim rather than the second. The Commission granted her motion and dismissed her first claim.

Upon realizing the error, Appellant filed a motion to reinstate the first claim and dismiss the second, which the Commission also granted. WMATA then filed a petition for judicial review in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. The circuit court vacated the Commission's order and remanded the matter for a new hearing on whether the Commission had the authority to reinstate the dismissed claim. The Commission held a hearing, found that it had the authorityto reinstate the claim and reinstated Appellant's first claim.

The Commission's order was filed and mailed to the parties. WMATA then filed a petition for judicial review. Appellant filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that WMATA's petition was filed after the statutorily prescribed thirty-day appeal period. The circuit court denied the motion. Thereafter, WMATA filed a motion for summary judgment and the circuit court granted that motion. Appellant, on appeal, presented two questions for review:

1) Did the circuit court err by denying her motion to dismiss WMATA's petition for judicial review as untimely filed?

2) Did the circuit court err as a matter of law by granting WMATA's Motion for Summary Judgment.

Held: Judgment of the circuit court for Montgomery County reversed; case remanded to that court with instructions to dismiss [WMATA's] petition for judicial review and remand the case to the Worker's Compensation Commission.

(synopsis to follow)

The opinion is available in PDF.

Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Corporation v. Yanni (Ct of Appeals)

Filed March 15, 2007. Opinion by Judge Lynne Battaglia, joined by Judge Glenn T. Harrell, Jr. as to the immunity issue only. Dissenting opinion by Judge Alan Wilner (retired, specially assigned).

From the opinion's headnote:

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION - INSURER - COVERED CLAIM - IMMUNITY
The Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Corporation (“PCIGC”) sought review of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County’s entry of summary judgment for Peter L. Yanni in which the Circuit Court upheld the Workers’ Compensation Commission’s award of late-payment penalties and attorneys’ fees to Yanni for PCIGC’s tardy payment of Yanni’s workers’ compensation award. The Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment for Yanni and held that the penalties should not have been assessed against the PCIGC because it was not an “insurer” for purposes of Section 9-728 of the Labor and Employment Article, and because the late-payment penalties were not part of Yanni’s “covered claims,” as the term is defined in Section 9-301(d) of the Insurance Article. The Court also concluded that, even if the PCIGC were an “insurer,” and the penalties were part of the “covered claim,” it was immune from the assessment of late-payment penalties under the provisions of Section 9-314(a) of the Insurance Article and Section 5-412 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article.

The court's official headnote adequately captures the substance of the majority opinion, but in dissent, Judge Wilner (joined by Cheif Judge Robert Bell) responded that the majority resorts to an overly constrained interpretation to come up with a conclusion at odds with the stated purposes for establishing PCIGC, "to provide a mechanism for the prompt payment of covered claims". Explicit language in the statute drops PCIGC into the shoes of the defaulting insurer, and thus PCIGC is an insurer for the perposes of the statuory scheme. Moreover, since the failure to timely pay the amounts due to Yanni was due to PCIGC's failure to timely pay amounts due under the policy, the penalties most certainly should be deemed as "arise out of" the policy. Finally, the dissent found the reasoning to afford immunity to PCIGC, derived for other cases, inapposite here, where PCIGC was being held accountable for its own failure to comply with the statute's requirement, and to suggest a different channel to seek redress as suggested in the majority opinion, "makes utterly no sense", and for all those reasons, would have affirmed the judgment of the court below.

The opinion is available in PDF format.

Del Marr v. Montgomery County (Ct. of Appeals)

Issued February 9, 2007 -- Opinion of Judge Alan Wilner

Petitioner suffered an injury to his back while in the employ of the Montgomery County Board of Education and received a preliminary award of $114 per week for 50 weeks of benefits from the Workers' Compensation Commission (the "Commission.") After two reopenings of his case reflecting the deterioration of his condition, Petitioner received an amended award of 115 weeks of benefits to be paid at the enhanced rate of $223 per week, to commence as of the effective date of the new order, with credit for "payments made" under the prior orders that did not involve an enhanced rate of weekly compensation. This enhanced rate was awarded pursuant to Maryland's Workers' Compensation Law, Md. Ann. Code, LE Sec. 9-628 and -629, which sections provide for enhanced weekly rates once the number of awarded weeks of benefits exceeds 75 weeks.

Montgomery County appealed the Commission's decision to the Montgomery County Circuit Court, which reversed in part the decision of the Commission, holding that credit was to be made not for the dollar amount of payments made but only for the prior weeks of payment without dollar adjustments for those prior weeks' lower rate. Upon etitioner's appeal of that decision, the Court of Special Appeals upheld the Circuit Court. Petitioner appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Citing precedent in prior cases in which workers' compensation claimants' awards had been both increased and decreased in judicial proceedings, the Court of Appeals upheld the decision of Court of Special Appeals, holding that amended awards by the Commission do not effectuate a retroactive rate increase for weeks already paid and do not require a credit for dollars of payment, only for weeks of payment at the previously applicable rates.

The opinion is available in full here in PDF.

Hill v. Knapp (Ct. of Appeals)

Decided January 6, 2007—Opinion by Judge Irma Raker

The appellant, Christopher Hill, was injured when a load of plywood dropped on him from a forklift while he was working on a pier in Baltimore. Hill filed a state common law negligence action against the forklift operator, appellee Daniel Knapp. On the primary issue of whether the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (33 U.S.C. §§901-950), preempts a state tort claim for damages by a longshoreman against a co-employee in the “twilight zone,” the Court of Appeals held that the federal act preempts such a claim.

The full opinion is available in PDF.

Hart v. Subsequent Injury Fund (Ct. of Special Appeals)

Decided December 29, 2006 -- Opinion by Judge Deborah S. Eyler.

Appellant appealed the Circuit Court for Kent County's granting of summary judgment against her in an appeal of a denial of subsequent injury benefits before the Workers Compensation Commission.

In September 2002, Appellant had impleaded the Subsequent Injury Fund in her workers' compensation case, but settled her claims shortly thereafter against her employer and its carrier by an "Agreement of Final Compromise and Settlement." The Agreement included a "guide form" questionnaire which asked, inter alia, whether the Subsequent Injury Fund had potential liability. Appellant answered that question in the affirmative.

In her appeal, Appellant argued that

1) She had informed the Workers Compensation Commission in her Guide Form that she had a claim pending against the Subsequent Injury Fund;

2) She did not affirmatively or in any other way give up her rights against the Subsequent Injury Fund; and

3) It was incumbent upon the Workers Compensation Commission itself to "either insure that the Claimant/Appellant's right to proceed further against the [Subsequent Injury Fund] was preserved or to affirmatively inform her that by signing the proposed Agreement she would finally and forever give up her rights against the [Subsequent Injury Fund]."

The Court of Special Appeals noted that the Code, LE §9-722, precluded in plain language any action against the Subsequent Injury Fund after a settlement of claims, unless the Workers Compensation Commission ordered to the contrary, which did not occur, and did not require that a claimant expressly give up such rights to be effective. The Court rejected Appellant's interpretation of her response to the questionnaire regarding the Subsequent Injury Fund's possible liability, characterizing it not as a device for preserving a claim but as a mere tool to prevent unjust results against claimants.

Finding no facts in dispute, the Court sustained the judgment in favor of the Subsequent Injury Fund and denied Appellant's appeal.

The full opinion is available in WPD and PDF.