Baltimore County v. Thiergartner

SHARER, J. This appeal follows the entry of a judgment in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, after consideration of Baltimore County’s request for judicial review of a decision and order of the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission (“the Commission”). Concurrent with its petition for judicial review, the County filed a motion for summary judgment. Appellee, Carroll Thiergartner, opposed the County’s petition, and filed a cross-motion for summary judgment. After a hearing, the circuit ⁵⁶² court denied the County’s motion for summary judgment and granted Thiergartner’s cross-motion for summary judgment.

The County presents two questions for our review which, as slightly edited, are: 1. Did the Circuit Court err, as a matter of law, in its rulings on thé parties’ respective motions for summary judgment? 2. Is the County entitled to a complete offset of workers’ compensation benefits by operation of Md.Code Ann., Lab. & Empl. § 9-503 due to Appellee’s election and receipt of payments under the County’s Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP)? 1 For the reasons that follow, we shall affirm the circuit court’s denial of the County’s motion for summary judgment, and affirm the grant of appellee’s motion. However, we shall remand for the purpose of recalculation of the amount by which appellee’s workers’ compensation benefits should be offset.

Standard of Review Our review of the trial court’s grant, or denial, of a motion for summary judgment is whether the trial court was legally correct, since a trial court decides issues of law, not fact, when granting summary judgment. Heat & Power Corp. v. Air Prods. & Chem., Inc., 320 Md. 584 , 578 A.2d 1202 (1990). “The court shall enter judgment in favor of or against the moving party if the motion and response show that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the party in whose favor judgment is entered is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Md. Rule 2—501(f). In this case, the circuit court found no disputes of material fact; indeed, the parties agree that there are no such disputes. The factual determina ⁵⁶³ tion having been made for us, “ ‘we review the trial court’s ruling on the law, considering the same material from the record and deciding the same legal issues as the circuit court.’ ” D’Aoust v. Diamond, 424 Md. 549, 575 , 36 A.3d 941 (2012) (quoting Messing v. Bank of America, N.A., 373 Md. 672, 684 , 821 A.2d 22 (2003)) (further citation omitted).

FACTS and PROCEEDINGS Appellee, Carroll Thiergartner, prior to his retirement in September 2005, was employed as a sworn Baltimore County firefighter for 33 years. During his active employment, Thiergartner participated in the County’s Deferred Retirement Option Program (“DROP”). At the time of his retirement, he opted to receive a lump-sum payment from his DROP account. In May 2010, nearly five years after he retired, Thiergartner began to develop chest pain.

He sought medical attention and was diagnosed and treated as follows: On May 19th of 2010 ... he was found to have a 99 percent occlusion of the left anterior descending artery. That was stented. And then two days later ... he was found to have a 99 percent occlusion of the right coronary artery and that was also stented. He was released from the hospital the next day.

Thereafter, on February 18, 2011, Thiergartner filed a claim for workers’ compensation benefits in which he asserted that his heart condition was a compensable “occupational disease” that arose from his employment with the County. Following a hearing, the Commission issued its order, on February 14, 2012, finding that the effects of Thiergartner’s coronary artery disease amounted to a 25 percent loss of the industrial use of his body. As a result, the Commission awarded Thiergartner permanent partial disability benefits. The Commission explained the calculation and distribution of Thiergartner’s benefits as follows: The claimant received DROP payment of $189,346.90 in ⁵⁶⁴ 2005.[ 2 ] This DROP payment was a retirement benefit within LE 9-503 and is therefore subject to offset.

The weekly prorated amount of this DROP payment combined with the Claimant’s regular retirement benefits totals $946.15. Therefore, the available weekly benefit payable after the retirement offset is $272.03 per week (weekly salary of $1,213.80 minus retirement benefits including prorated DROP of $946.15). The employer and insurer shall pay unto the claimant compensation for permanent partial disability, at the rate of $272.03, payable weekly, beginning May 20, 2010, for a period of 125 weeks. The County sought judicial review of the Commission’s order.

In its motion for summary judgment, the County conceded that, with respect to individuals who were employed as firefighters, under L.E. § 9-503(a)(l), “conditions of heart disease and/or hypertension” are presumed to be compensable occupational diseases arising in the course of employment. The County took no exception to the Commission’s finding of a compensable condition, nor of the Commission’s disability rating. The substance of the County’s argument was, and is, with respect to the Commission’s calculation of Thiergartner’s workers’ compensation award. The County argued, correctly, that under L.E. § 9-503(e)(2), the combined total of an individual’s weekly retirement and workers’ compensation benefits may not exceed the weekly salary he or she received while last employed.

Thus, the County contended that the Commission was incorrect in its benefit offset calculation because it did not appropriately account for the cumulative retirement benefit Thiergartner received, ie., the $189,346.90 lump sum DROP payment. It was the County’s position below that the Commission’s calculation of Thiergartner’s maximum workers’ compensation benefit only took into account his weekly pre-retirement income of ⁵⁶⁵ $1,213.80, and the fact that, had he not chosen to accept the DROP lump sum, he would have received weekly retirement benefits of $946.15. Applying those figures, the circuit court found that Thiergartner was eligible for a maximum workers’ compensation award of $272.03 per week. The County argued its position that, as Thiergartner’s compensable occupational disease allowed, by law, a maximum compensation benefit of $307 per week, the lump sum DROP payment should have offset any compensation award for a total of up to 617 weeks; that is, Thiergartner’s receipt of the lump sum DROP retirement benefit should have completely offset his workers’ compensation award.

Thiergartner’s position before the circuit court, and now, was that, because his pre-retirement weekly income was $1,213.80 and his weekly retirement benefits were $847.40, he was eligible to receive as much as $366.40 per week in workers’ compensation benefits. 3 He contended that factoring the lump sum DROP payment into the workers’ compensation award calculation would be improper, under the offset provision of L.E. § 9-503, because only retirement benefits which would overlap with a potential workers’ compensation award may factor into the award calculation. His position was that because he received the DROP payment more than five years before the workers’ compensation award, the separate sources did not overlap and so the former—the DROP—should not be applied to offset the latter—the workers compensation award. Moreover, Thiergartner asserted that the offset language in L.E. § 9-503 applied only to the “weekly total” of retirement and workers’ compensation benefits and so could not apply to a one-time benefit, such as the lump sum DROP payment. ⁵⁶⁶ Alternatively, Thiergartner contends that if his lump sum DROP payment was to be accounted for in his workers’ compensation award, the appropriate method would be to apply the weekly retirement benefits he would have received if he had not opted for a lump sum payout, namely, the greater weekly retirement benefit of $946.15. He noted that this was the approach taken by the Commission in calculating his workers’ compensation award.

Lastly, Thiergartner posits that the calculation advocated by the County was not supported by any statute or case law, so the trial court was correct in its denial of the County’s motion for summary judgment. Following the hearing on the parties’ motions, the circuit court issued its order, on November 19, 2012, denying the County’s motion for summary judgment, granting Thiergartner’s cross-motion for summary judgment, and explaining only that it was “persuaded that the approach of [the Commission] [was] correct.” Additional facts will be provided below as our analysis requires. DISCUSSION On appeal, the parties’ arguments are identical to those raised in their respective motions for summary judgment. The County contends that proper adjustment of Thiergartner’s workers’ compensation award requires accounting for the lump sum DROP payment he received, $189,346.90, by dividing that sum by the maximum weekly workers’ compensation award he was eligible to receive for his compensable coronary artery disease, $307 per week, in order to arrive at the number of weeks by which his workers’ compensation award should be offset.

That arithmetic exercise results in a product of 617 weeks. Clearly, this method of calculation would provide for a complete offset of the compensation award granted, which was $272.03 per week for 125 weeks. In contrast, Thiergartner asserts that a legally correct offset calculation would not take the lump sum DROP pay ⁵⁶⁷ ment into account at all, because that payment was not made to him during a time in which he was also eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits. He maintains, alternatively, that if the lump sum must be part of the workers’ compensation award offset equation, the Commission’s method of making the calculation was correct, ie., by applying the greater amount of weekly retirement benefits he would have received had he not opted to take the DROP payment.

Initially, we recognize, and the parties agree, that there are no disputes regarding any of the material facts of the case. As we have laid out previously, Thiergartner’s pre-retirement weekly income was $1,213.80. Upon his retirement, Thiergartner opted to receive his benefits via a lump sum payment of $189,346.90, along with subsequent weekly payments of $847.40. In so doing, he declined the benefits option which included no lump sum payment but provided for higher weekly payments in the amount of $946.15.

Several years later, Thiergartner was awarded workers’ compensation benefits due to his coronary artery disease, a condition first discovered after his retirement, and statutorily presumed to have resulted from his employment. L.E. § 9-503(a)(l). The Commission recognized that under L.E. § 9-503 the sum of his weekly workers’ compensation and retirement benefits could not legally exceed his weekly pre-retirement salary. In its decision, the Commission attempted to fully account for the sum of Thiergartner’s retirement benefits and, applying his weekly