Harford County, Maryland v. Gary E. Mitchell, Sr.
No. 3456, September Term 2018
Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
April 2, 2020
Beachley, J.
REPORTED
WORKERS’ COMPENSATION—OFFSETS
Appellee developed cardiovascular disease while working as a Deputy Sheriff for Harford County. He was awarded workers’ compensation benefits in 2005. Ten years later, appellee retired and began receiving retirement benefits as well as workers’ compensation benefits. Pursuant to
The County appealed to the Circuit Court for Harford County, arguing that the offset should have been calculated based on appellee‘s average weekly wage when he first received workers’ compensation benefits. The circuit court affirmed the Commission‘s decision, and the County appealed.
Held: Judgment affirmed. The offset in
Circuit Court for Harford County
Case No. 12-C-18-000570
REPORTED
IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS
OF MARYLAND
No. 3456
September Term, 2018
HARFORD COUNTY, MARYLAND
v.
GARY E. MITCHELL,
Nazarian,
Beachley,
Shaw Geter,
JJ.
Opinion by Beachley, J.
Filed: April 2, 2020
Pursuant to Maryland Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (§§ 10-1601 et seq. of the State Government Article) this document is authentic.
Suzanne Johnson
2020-04-02 13:48-04:00
Suzanne C. Johnson, Clerk
Public safety employees suffering from a work-related occupational disease are generally entitled to receive workers’ compensation indemnity benefits in addition to any retirement benefits from a retirement plan the employee participated in at the time of the claim. That entitlement to receive both workers’ compensation and retirement benefits is limited by an offset delineated in
BACKGROUND
The parties do not dispute the relevant facts. Appellee Gary Mitchell worked as a Deputy Sheriff for appellant Harford County. After developing cardiovascular disease during his employment, Mitchell was awarded temporary total disability benefits on October 14, 2005. His average weekly wage at that time was $1,196.69.1
Upon Mitchell‘s retirement on July 1, 2015, he began receiving $790.48 per week in retirement benefits from a government sponsored pension plan. On January 30, 2017, more than eighteen months after he retired, the Worker‘s Compensation Commission (“Commission“) increased Mitchell‘s permanent partial disability award to $578.00 per week as a result of a worsening of his condition. In determining the
Calculation of average weekly salary: The parties are to utilize the “weekly salary that was paid to the . . . police officer” which would be based on the weeks prior to retirement as opposed to the weeks used for average weekly wage which is determined by the weeks prior to the date of disablement.
(Alteration in original). The Commission determined that Mitchell‘s weekly salary for the fourteen weeks prior to retirement was $1,721.00.2
The County appealed the Commission‘s decision to the Circuit Court for Harford County. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment in the circuit court. The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of Mitchell, adopting the Commission‘s interpretation of the
The County argues that “weekly salary” in
Mitchell responds that the Commission‘s interpretation of the term “weekly salary” is consistent with the statute‘s legislative purpose. He contends that, because the clear legislative intent of
The “paramount objective” when construing a statute “is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the legislature.” Breitenbach v. N.B. Handy Co., 366 Md. 467, 472 (2001) (quoting Philip Elecs. N. Am. v. Wright, 348 Md. 209, 216 (1997)). When interpreting the language of a statute, we seek to determine the intent of the legislature by looking first to “the language of the statute itself.” Injured Workers’ Ins. Fund v. Subsequent Injury Fund, 447 Md. 211, 226 (2016) [hereinafter IWIF] (quoting Schweitzer v. Brewer, 280 Md. 430, 438 (1977)). “Generally, we give the words of the statute their ‘ordinary and common meaning within the context in which they are used.‘” Mayor & City Council of Balt. v. Johnson, 156 Md. App. 569, 592 (2004) (quoting Polomski v. Mayor & City Council of Balt., 344 Md. 70, 75 (1996)). “Even in instances ‘when the language is unambiguous, it is useful to review legislative history to confirm that interpretation and to eliminate another version of legislative intent alleged to be latent in the language.‘” Blackstone v. Sharma, 461 Md. 87, 113 (2018) (quoting State v. Roshchin, 446 Md. 128, 140 (2016)). “[I]f the plain meaning of the statutory language is clear and unambiguous, and consistent with both the broad purposes of the legislation, and the specific purpose of the provision being interpreted, our inquiry is at an end.” Breitenbach, 366 Md. at 473.
If the language is ambiguous, we then consider the “objectives and purpose of the enactment.” Johnson, 156 Md. App. at 592–93 (quoting Tucker v. Fireman‘s Fund Ins. Co., 308 Md. 69, 75 (1986)). To that end, “we read a statute so ‘that no word, phrase, clause, or sentence is rendered surplusage or meaningless.‘” Id. at 593 (quoting Mazor v. State Dep‘t of Correction, 279 Md. 355, 360 (1977)). We also may not “add or delete words” to give the statute “a meaning not reflected by the words the Legislature
The relevant portion of the Workers’ Compensation Act at issue here reads:
(e)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection, any . . . paid police officer . . . who is eligible for benefits under subsection (a), (b), (c), or (d) of this section or the dependents of those individuals shall receive the benefits in addition to any benefits that the individual or the dependents of the individual are entitled to receive under the retirement system in which the individual was a participant at the time of the claim.
(2) The benefits received under this title shall be adjusted so that the weekly total of those benefits and retirement benefits does not exceed the weekly salary that was paid to the . . . police officer.
A provision of the workers’ compensation law creates a presumption favorable to certain categories of public safety employees. In particular, the law presumes that certain disabling medical conditions, such as heart disease, hypertension, and lung disease, are occupational diseases suffered in the line of duty and are therefore compensable under the workers’ compensation law. However, the statute caps those benefits: the sum of workers’ compensation benefits and a retired employee‘s retirement benefits may not exceed the employee‘s average weekly salary during employment. The formula for capping workers’ compensation benefits, seemingly simple in its description, inevitably raises questions in its implementation, particularly when its components take different forms paid on different timetables.
442 Md. 518, 519 (2015). Thus, while the essential legislative purpose is obvious, its “implementation” is not so clear. This case presents the type of implementation difficulty that the Thiergartner Court presciently foresaw.
Because of the statutory ambiguity, we consider the legislative purpose for the statute. Johnson, 156 Md. App. at 592–93. The purpose of the Workers’ Compensation Act generally is to “provide employees with compensation for loss of earning capacity, regardless of fault, resulting from accidental injury [or occupational disease] occurring in the course of employment.” Johnson v. Mayor & City Council of Balt., 203 Md. App. 673, 684 (2012) (quoting Doe v. Buccini Pollin Grp., Inc., 201 Md. App. 409, 420 (2011)). The presumption of compensability in
The legislative history of the statute sheds no light on the legislative intent. The original version of the statute, Art. 101, § 64A, was “added to the workers’ compensation law in 1971 prior to the time when the General Assembly retained legislative background materials pertaining to individual bills.” Thiergartner, 442 Md. at 530 n.8. The difference in wording between Art 101, § 64A and its recodification as the current
When the offset formula was recodified in 1991 as part of the new Labor & Employment Article, the code revisors noted, for consideration by the General Assembly that the statute did not specify the period of time that should be used for determining the “weekly salary” of the individual. The General Assembly has not yet responded to the revisors’ suggestion.
Thiergartner, 442 Md. at 525 n.4 (citation omitted). The General Assembly has still not responded to the code revisors’ suggestion.
In our quest to unearth legislative intent, Injured Workers’ Insurance Fund
The statute under consideration there,
(a)(1) The Commission shall impose an assessment of 6.5%, payable to the Subsequent Injury Fund, on:
(i) each award against an employer or its insurer for permanent disability or death, including awards for disfigurement and mutilation;
(ii) except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection, each amount payable by an employer or its insurer under a settlement agreement approved by the Commission; and
(iii) each amount payable under item (i) or (ii) of this paragraph by the Property and Casualty Guaranty Corporation on behalf of an insolvent insurer.
(Emphasis added).
In two consolidated appeals, the respective employers argued that “award” in subsection (i) should be construed to require the employers to pay the 6.5% SIF assessment based on the amount payable to the claimants after the statutory offsets. IWIF, 447 Md. at 222-23. The Court rejected this interpretation because the employers did not consider the word in the context of the rest of the statute, stating that the employers’ definition “ignores the fact that
The General Assembly chose to use different language to impose the [Subsequent Injury Fund] assessment on awards for permanent disability or death as compared to settlement agreements. This evidences the clear intent of the General Assembly to have the 6.5% assessment applied to the entire award for permanent disability or death rather than the amount payable after deductions are made for offsets.
Id. at 228. Finally, the Court concluded that interpreting “award” to mean the amount of the award prior to the offset was in keeping with the purpose of the statutory scheme. Id. at 228-29. Doing so “does not place a double burden on the public employer . . . because the employer or its insurer pays no more to [the] SIF than it would have paid had the employee not received any offsetting disability retirement benefits.” Id. at 229 (alterations in original) (quoting Injured Workers’ Ins. Fund, 222 Md. App. at 358).
Important to our analysis is the principle that when “two statutes say different things, they mean different things.” Polomski, 344 Md. at 82. Just as “award” and “amount payable” mean different things when used in different parts of the same statutory scheme, IWIF, 447 Md. 211, we discern a distinct legislative intent from the use of “weekly salary” in
The only other potential time period for calculating the
Contrary to the County‘s assertions, interpreting “weekly salary” to refer to the period immediately before retirement will not result in multiple compensations for a single wage loss. Mitchell lost a single weekly wage—the $1,721.00 he was receiving before retirement. Under our interpretation of the statute, Mitchell will receive his $790.48 weekly retirement benefit plus $578.00 per week in workers’ compensation benefits, for a total of $1,368.48 per week. Thus, Mitchell will receive $352.52 less per week than his weekly salary at retirement. We fail to see how this interpretation requires the County to pay duplicate benefits.
Our interpretation of the statutory offset brings this case in line with the common situation where the employee develops an occupational disease after retiring. The County cites to IWIF, 447 Md. 211; Thiergartner, 442 Md. 518; Johnson, 156 Md. App. 569; and Harris v. Mayor & City Council of Balt., 66 Md. App. 397 (1986), to argue that those cases assumed that “weekly salary” means “average weekly wage.” However, in all of the cited cases, the claimants began receiving retirement or death benefits either prior to or concurrently with their date of disablement. The last time period in which those claimants were paid any weekly salary or wage was immediately prior to retirement or death. Thus, there was no controversy in those cases whether “weekly salary” meant something different from “average weekly wage” because all parties agreed that the period prior to retirement or death should be used to calculate the offset. Thiergartner was the only case that mentioned the potential ambiguity in determining
We conclude that the legislature intended “weekly salary” in
JUDGMENT OF THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR HARFORD COUNTY AFFIRMED. COSTS TO BE PAID BY APPELLANT.