Breitenbach v. N.B. Handy Co.

⁴⁷¹ BELL, Chief Judge. The question this case presents is whether a workers’ compensation claimant, who has been injured in the course of employment and is receiving medical treatment pursuant to an award by the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission (the “Commission”), is entitled to reimbursement for the cost of transportation to and from the treating health care provider. We shall answer that question in the affirmative. William B. Breitenbach, the appellant, filed a workers’ compensation claim that the N.B. Handy Company and American Manufacturers Mutual Insurance Company, the employer and insurer, respectively, and the appellees, did not contest, and the Commission passed an order granting the appellant benefits, including medical treatment.

Subsequently, the appellant requested the appellees to reimburse him, at the rate of $.80 per mile, for the miles he traveled going to and from medical treatment. The request was denied, whereupon the appellant sought and received a hearing before the Commission. 1 The Commission ordered the appellees to reimburse the appellant for his mileage expenses. The appellees filed a Petition for Judicial Review in the Circuit Court for St. Mary’s County. Thereafter, the parties filed cross motions for summary judgment.

Following a hearing, the Circuit Court granted the appellees’ motion and denied the appellant’s, thus, reversing the Commission’s decision. Dissatisfied with that ruling, the appellant noted an appeal to the Court of Special Appeals. Prior to that court’s consideration of the appeal, we granted certiorari on our own motion. As indicated, we believe that a workers’ compensation claimant receiving medical treatment pursuant to an order of the Commission is entitled to be reimbursed the reasonable and necessary transportation expenses for travel to and from that medical treatment.

Consequently, we shall ⁴⁷² reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court for St. Mary’s County. This case involves statutory construction of the Workers’ Compensation Act, Title 9 of the Labor and Employment Article, Maryland Code (1999 Repl.Vol., 2000 Cum. Supp.), thus, the principles that guide us have been stated on numerous occasions and are well settled. We recently reiterated those principles in Philip Elecs.

North America v. Wright, 348 Md. 209, 212 , 703 A.2d 150, 151 (1997), stating: “As we have repeatedly emphasized, the Act is remedial in nature and “ ‘should be construed as liberally in favor of injured employees as its provisions will permit in order to effectuate its benevolent purposes.’ ” Para v. Richards Group, 339 Md. 241, 251 , 661 A.2d 737, 742 (1995) (quoting Howard Co. Ass’n Retard. Cit. v. Walls, 288 Md. 526, 530 , 418 A.2d 1210, 1213 (1980)); see § 9-102(a). Thus, in interpreting the Act, we do not apply the canon of construction that a statute in derogation of the common law should be strictly construed. § 9-102(b). Moreover, all sections of the Act must be read together, in conjunction with one another, to discern the true intent of the legislature.

Vest v. Giant Food Stores, Inc., 329 Md. 461, 466-67 , 620 A.2d 340, 342 (1993); Ryder Truck Lines v. Kennedy, 296 Md. 528, 537 , 463 A.2d 850, 856 (1983). Of course, we seek to avoid an interpretation which would lead to an untenable or illogical outcome. Greco v. State, 347 Md. 423, 429 , 701 A.2d 419, 422 (1997); Waskiewicz v. General Motors Corp., 342 Md. 699, 708 , 679 A.2d 1094, 1099 (1996); see also Superior Builders, Inc. v. Brown, 208 Md. 539, 543 , 119 A.2d 376, 378 (1956) (“The Act should receive a practical construction, and should be so interpreted and construed as to effectuate its general purpose.”). In construing the Act, as in construing all statutes, the paramount objective is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the legislature.

Marriott Employees v. Motor Vehicle Admin., 346 Md. 437, 444 , 697 A.2d 455, 458 (1997); Bowen v. Smith, 342 Md. 449, 454 , 677 A.2d 81, 83 (1996). ⁴⁷³ In interpreting the Act, we apply the following general principles. First, if 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. Marriott Employees, 346 Md. at 445 , 697 A.2d at 458 ; Frank v. Baltimore County, 284 Md. 655, 661 , 399 A.2d 250, 254 (1979); see Polomski v. Baltimore, 344 Md. 70, 75-76 , 684 A.2d 1338, 1340 (1996). Second, when the meaning of the plain language is ambiguous or unclear, we seek to discern the intent of the legislature from surrounding circumstances, such as legislative history, prior case law, and the purposes upon which the statutory framework was based.

DeBusk [v. Johns Hopkins Hosp.], 342 Md. [432] at 437, 677 A.2d [73] at 75 [1996]. Last, applying a canon of construction specific to the Act, if the intent of the legislature is ambiguous or remains unclear, we resolve any uncertainty in favor of the claimant. Baltimore v. Cassidy, 338 Md. 88, 97 , 656 A.2d 757, 761-62 (1995); Lovellette v. Baltimore, 297 Md. 271, 282 , 465 A.2d 1141, 1147 (1983). This Court, however, may not stifle the plain meaning of the Act, or exceed its purposes, so that the injured worker may prevail.

Morris v. Bd. of Educ., 339 Md. 374, 384 , 663 A.2d 578, 583 (1995). Similarly, the Court may not create ambiguity or uncertainty in the Act’s provisions where none exists so that a provision may be interpreted in favor of the injured claimant. R & T Constr. v. Judge, 82 Md.App. 700, 709 , 573 A.2d 96, 100 (1990), modified, 323 Md. 514 , 594 A.2d 99 (1991).” Of course, “[t]he cardinal rule of statutory interpretation is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the legislature.” Oaks v. Connors, 339 Md. 24, 35 , 660 A.2d 423, 429 (1995). Important to determining legislative intent, sought in the first instance in the actual language of the statute, Marriott Employees Fed. Credit Union v. Motor Vehicle Admin., 346 Md. 437, 444-45 , 697 A.2d, 455, 458 (1997); Stanford v. Maryland Police Training & Correctional Comm’n, 346 Md. 374, 380 , 697 A.2d 424, 427 (1997)(quoting ⁴⁷⁴ Tidewater/Havre de Grace, Inc. v. Mayor of Havre de Grace, 337 Md. 338, 344 , 653 A.2d 468, 472 (1995)); Coburn v. Coburn, 342 Md. 244, 256 , 674 A.2d 951, 957 (1996); Romm v. Flax, 340 Md. 690, 693 , 668 A.2d 1, 2 (1995); Oaks, 339 Md. at 35 , 660 A.2d at 429 ; Mauzy v. Hornbeck, 285 Md. 84, 92 , 400 A.2d 1091, 1096 (1979); Bd. of Supervisors v. Weiss, 217 Md. 133, 136 , 141 A.2d 734, 736 (1958), is the purpose of the statutory scheme of which the statute under review is a part.

Here, that purpose was set out in the Preamble to Acts 1914, ch. 800, which enacted what is now the Workers’ Compensation Act. We have stated that purpose as being “to protect workers and their families from hardships inflicted by work-related injuries by providing workers with compensation for loss of earning capacity resulting from accidental injury arising out of and in the course of employment,” Howard County Ass’n, Retard. Cit. v. Walls, 288 Md. 526 , 531, 418 A.2d 1210 (1980), and “to promote the general welfare of the State and to prevent the State and its taxpayers from having to care for injured workmen and their dependents, when under the law as it previously existed, such workmen could not recover damages for their injuries.” Paul v. Glidden Co., 184 Md. 114, 119 , 39 A.2d 544, 546 (1944). See also Victor v. Proctor & Gamble Mfg.

Co., 318 Md. 624, 628-29 , 569 A.2d 697, 699-700 (1990); Unsatisfied Claim Bd. v. Salvo, 231 Md. 262, 264 , 189 A.2d 638, 639 (1963); Egeberg v. Md. Steel Prods. Co., 190 Md. 374, 379 , 58 A.2d 684, 685 (1948). We have repeatedly emphasized the Act’s remedial nature and that it “should be construed as liberally in favor of the injured employees as its provisions will permit in order to effectuate its benevolent purposes.” Howard County Ass’n Retard. Cit. v. Walls, 288 Md. at 530 , 418 A.2d at 1213 .

Thus, we also have said, in interpreting the Act, we do not apply the cannon of construction that a statute in derogation of the common law should be strictly construed. Philip Elecs., 348 Md. at 216-17 , 703 A.2d at 153-54 . See Porter v. Bayliner Marine Corp., 349 Md. 609, 616 , 709 A.2d 1205, 1208 (1998); B. Frank Joy Co. v. Isaac, 333 Md. 628, 634-35 , 636 A.2d 1016 , ⁴⁷⁵ 1019 (1994). Section 9-102, relating to the construction of the Act, is consistent, providing: “(a) In general. — This title shall be construed to carry out its general purpose.

(b) Rule for strict construction inapplicable.- — The rule that a statute in derogation of the common law is to be strictly construed does not apply to this title.” At issue in this case are the reasonable travel expenses necessary for the appellant to go back and forth to the providers of the medical treatment the Commission ordered the appellees to provide. Section 9-660(a), which pertains to medical services and treatment provided, prescribes: “(a) in addition to the compensation provided under this subtitle, if a covered employee has suffered an accidental personal injury, compensable hernia, or occupational disease the employer or its insurer promptly shall provide to the covered employee, as the Commission may require: (1) medical, surgical, or other attendance or treatment; (2) hospital and nursing services; (3) medicine; (4) crutches and other apparatus; and (5) artificial arms, feet, hands, and legs and other prosthetic appliances.” Thus, the specific issue is the scope of § 9-660(a)(l), the only category that arguably applies, whether, in other words, “medical, surgical, or other attendance or treatment” is sufficiently broad to encompass such expenses. The Circuit Court, contrary to the ruling of the Commission, held the appellant was not entitled to be reimbursed for the expenses of traveling to and from the treatment that the Commission ordered. The court was persuaded by the absence in the Act, and thus in § 9-660, of an explicit requirement that mileage expenses, or their reimbursement, be provided by the employer and insurer in connection with the medical treatment for which the Act expressly makes them responsible.

Rejecting the appellant’s argument based on the ⁴⁷⁶ Commission’s history of ordering such payments and observing that “it isn’t an obscure statute, it plainly says, ‘legs, arms and medical expenses,’ it doesn’t say, ‘and other reasonably incurred expenses that logically flow from and are necessary and natural to make him totally whole,’ because that is not the theory behind the Workers’ Compensation Law, as opposed to tort law,” the court concluded that “the [Legislature would [have], if it believed mileage should be an item, lunch, any other reasonably incurred expenses going to and from doctors, they would have said so.” The appellees agree. They add that so interpreting the Act is consistent with requiring a worker to pay for his or her travel to and from work, pointing out, “[w]hen working, an employee is required to pay for his own transportation, generally speaking, so when he is out of work as the result of an accident, it is not unreasonable to ask him to pay the costs for his transportation to health care providers.” According to the appellees, “[t]his new activity essentially replaces the costs of travel to and from employment.” Moreover, the appellees offer evidence that the Legislature knows how to provide for the payment of transportation expenses as a benefit in a particular circumstance: § 9-674 2 ⁴⁷⁷ applicable to vocational rehabilitation. They point out that this section specifically provides that a worker receiving vocational rehabilitation benefits is entitled, under certain circumstances, to reimbursement for mileage expenses for traveling to and from rehabilitation counselors and vendors. “In fact,” they assert, “section [§ 9-674(a) ] provides that employers are to generally pay the “expenses” of any vocational rehabilitation assessment or services.... That statement and that requirement are altogether absent in the section concerning medical benefits.” To the appellees, contrasting § 9-660 with § 9-674 leads inexorably to the conclusion that the former does not include transportation expenses: “There is nothing inherent in the nature of requiring an insurer to pay medical benefits that mileage is necessarily included.

It would make more sense that the Legislature would have put it in both sections had it meant that benefit to be included in both situations.” Not unexpectedly, the appellant sees the matter quite differently. To him, the purpose of the Workers’ Compensation Act and the holding of R & T Const. Co. v. Judge, 323 Md. 514, 531 , 594 A.2d 99, 108 (1991), which he characterizes as requiring van transportation of a quadriplegic to his physician’s office for treatment, together “clearly suggest that Maryland would adhere to the strong national majority view among states to the effect that reasonable transportation costs are covered under the workers’ compensation law, even when the statute speaks of nothing more than medical and hospital treatment.” ⁴⁷⁸ Like the appellees, the appellant relies on § 9-674 to support his position. Agreeing with the appellees that subsection (a) of that section generally requires the employer to pay the expenses incurred in vocational rehabilitation, he notes, however, that the subsection does not specifically mention transportation expenses.

Indeed, the appellant points out that such costs are specifically mentioned only in subsection (d) and then to deny reimbursement for transportation expenses to an employee who is residing at home while receiving vocational training services, thus generally exempting the employer from reimbursing such employees, but allowing reimbursement, in fact placing on the employer the obligation to pay such expenses, in “unusual cases.” This means, the appellant concludes, “The very inclusion of a provision disallowing transportation expenses in the case of vocational rehabilitation benefits carries with it the negative implication that the Legislature assumed transportation expenses would be covered in other contexts of workers’ compensation, including medical transportation.” The appellant’s interpretation of § 9-660 as including transportation expenses in connection with medical treatment is buttressed, he argues, by the fact that § 9-674(d) refers only to training, although vocational rehabilitation services involve more than simply training. Noting the definition of “vocational rehabilitation services” in § 9-670(e), 3 while reiterating that ⁴⁷⁹ vocational rehabilitation training is only one of the nine services listed and emphasizing that coordination of medical services is among them, and reminding us that the employer, pursuant to § 9-674(a), is responsible for the payment of “the expenses of the vocational assessment and vocational rehabilitation services of a covered employee,” the appellant argues: “In only one of these distinct services, ‘vocational rehabilitation training,’ (emphasis supplied) is payment of transportation costs exempted. It stands to reason that by singling out training as the only vocational rehabilitation service for which transportation expenses are not covered, employers and insurers are required to pay for transportation expenses during the other eight distinct services, including the coordination of medical services. By singling out this one service for exclusion of transportation, a fair inference can be drawn that the Legislature assumed the employer and insurer had a duty to pay for transportation expenses elsewhere in the vocational rehabilitation statute and elsewhere in the Act.” Critical to the appellees’ position, as the trial court held, is the supposition that the Legislature intentionally neglected to mention transportation costs in connection with medical services in § 9-660 and that, by this omission, the Legislature clearly and unambiguously expressed the intention not to require the employer and insurer to pay such costs or expenses.

Stated another way, if § 9-660 is clear and unambiguous in excluding from the employer and insurer’s responsibility the costs of transportation in connection with medical care, there is no occasion to construe it. The search for the Legislature’s intention elsewhere is unnecessary; there is no need for the liberal construction applicable to the interpretation of the Workers’ Compensation Act. This is so because “the plain meaning of the Act may not be disregarded in the name of liberal construction.” Porter v. Bayliner Marine Corp., 349 Md. at 616-17 , 709 A.2d at 1208 (1998), citing Cassidy, 338 Md. at 97 , 656 A.2d at 762 . ⁴⁸⁰ On the other hand, if § 9-660 is ambiguous, if the mere fact of the omission of a reference to transportation costs does not clearly and ambiguously express the Legislature’s intention with regard to the employer and insurer’s liability for the payment of such costs in connection with medical treatment, then the rule of liberal construction applies; it must be interpreted so as to comply with the legislative command, contained in § 9-102(a), to “carry out [the] general purpose” of the Act. Isaac, 333 Md. at 635 , 636 A.2d at 1020 .

See also Cassidy, 338 Md. at 97 , 656 A.2d at 761-62 ; Victor v. Proctor & Gamble Mfg. Co., 318 Md. at 629 , 569 A.2d at 700 . It may well be that, when viewed alone, in isolation or a vacuum, § 9-660 is clear and unambiguous, that the omission of an express provision requiring the employer and insurer to pay transportation expenses in connection with medical treatment and the failure of the statute to mention such expenses is indication enough that the Legislature did not intend those expenses to be covered. But § 9-660 cannot be read in a vacuum.

Porter v. Bayliner Marine Corp., 349 Md. at 617 , 709 A.2d at 1209-1210 . In GEICO v. Ins. Comm’r, 332 Md. 124, 132-33 , 630 A.2d 713, 717-18 (1993), we instructed: “Where the statute to be construed is a part of a statutory scheme, the legislative intention is not determined from that statute alone, rather it is to be discerned by considering it in light of the statutory scheme. State v. Crescent Cities Jaycees Found., 330 Md. 460, 468 , 624 A.2d 955 , 959.

When, in that scheme, two statutes, enacted at different times and not referring to each other, Farmers & Merchs. Bank v. Schlossberg, 306 Md. 48, 56 , 507 A.2d 172, 176 (1986); Mgmt. Personnel Serv. v. Sandefur, 300 Md. 332, 341 , 478 A.2d 310, 314 (1984), address the same subject, they must be read together, State v. Bricker, 321 Md. 86, 93 , 581 A.2d 9, 12 (1990), i.e., interpreted with reference to one another, Schlossberg, 306 Md. at 61 , 507 A.2d at 178 ; Bridges v. Nicely, 304 Md. 1, 10 , 497 A.2d 142, 146 (1985), and harmonized, to the extent possible, both with each other and with other provisions of the statutory scheme. Balto. ⁴⁸¹ Gas & Elec. v. Public Serv.

Comm’n, 305 Md. at 157, 501 A.2d at 1313. Neither statute should be read, however, so as to render the other, or any portion of it, meaningless, surplusage, superfluous or nugatory. Tracey v. Tracey, 328 Md. 380, 387 , 614 A.2d 590, 594 (1992); D & Y, Inc. v. Winston, 320 Md. 534, 538 , 578 A.2d 1177, 1179 (1990); Kindley v. Governor of Md., 289 Md. 620, 625 , 426 A.2d 908, 912 (1981); Moberly v. Herboldsheimer, 276 Md. 211, 217 , 345 A.2d 855, 858 (1975).” See also Bd. of County Comm’rs of Garrett County v. Bell, 346 Md. 160, 178 , 695 A.2d 171, 180 (1997) (“When interpreting any statute, we must look to the entire statutory scheme, and not any one provision in isolation, to effect the statute’s general policies and purposes”); State v. Thompson, 332 Md. 1, 7 , 629 A.2d 731, 734 (1993) (“when we are called upon to interpret two statutes that involve the same subject matter, have a common purpose, and form part of the same system, we read them in pari materia and construe them harmoniously”); Truck Ins. Exch. v. Marks Rentals, 288 Md. 428, 433 , 418 A.2d 1187 (1980).

Moreover, “[statutes that are clear when viewed separately may well be ambiguous where their application in a given situation, or when they operate together, is not clear.” Gardner v. State, 344 Md. 642, 650 , 689 A.2d 610, 614 (1997). See Sullins v. Allstate, 340 Md. 503, 508 , 667 A.2d 617, 619 (1995) (a term which is unambiguous in one context may be ambiguous in another); State of Maryland v. Crescent Cities Jaycees, 330 Md. 460, 468 , 624 A.2d 955, 959 (1993); Tucker v. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co., 308 Md. 69, 74 , 517 A.2d 730, 732 (1986) (“That a term may be free from ambiguity when used in one context but of doubtful application in another context is well settled.”). Section 9-674 is a part, as we have seen, of the Workers’ Compensation Act and, therefore, it, too, is relevant in the search for the meaning and scope of § 9-660.

Indeed, although reaching different conclusions, both the appellant and the appellees rely on it. While the appellees view its ⁴⁸² significance as lying in the fact that the Legislature addressed the transportation expenses issue in enacting § 9-674, and did