Dashiell v. Holland Maide Candy Shops

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appeal is from a denial of the appellant’s petition to reopen a claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, article 101, for the purpose of adding to her compensation, because the petition was filed after the expiration of the year allowed for such an application by the Acts of 1981, eh. 342, amending section 54 of the act. An Act of 1935, chapter 236, effective subsequent to the expiration of that year, extended time allowances to three years, and the appellant contends that it extended the time for her application, notwithstanding the previous lapse of the time then allowed. The court below ruled against that contention.

The injury, a cutting off of the ends of the appellant’s fingers on the right hand, occurred on July 15th, 1933, and on August 2nd, 1933, the State Industrial Accident Commission awarded compensation of eight dollars a week from July 19th, 1988, for temporary total disability, and after termination of that temporary disability eight dollars a week for forty-eight weeks for permanent partial disability. A final settlement receipt was, as usual, ⁷⁴ ordered to be filed with the Commission in due time, and the record shows it to have been filed on September 4th, 1934. On July 3rd, 1935, the claimant, as stated, filed her petition for the reopening and consideration of further disability accrued. The Act of 1931 added to section 54 of the Compensation Act a proviso that “no modification or change of any final award of compensation shall be made by the Commission unless application therefor shall be made to the Commission within one year next following the final award of compensation.” The succeeding Act of 1935, effective June 1st, 1935, changed the word “one” to “three,” and added a provision that “no award shall be considered a final award under this Section unless it shall have been so designated on the award by the Commission.” It is, of course, a general principle that statutes are not to be given a retrospective effect unless their words require it, and the rule controls limitation provisions in statutes.

Ireland v. Shipley, 165 Md. 90, 99 , 166 A. 593 . “A statute ought not to have a retroactive operation, unless its words are so clear, strong and imperative, that no other meaning can be annexed to them, or unless the intention of the Legislature could not be otherwise satisfied ; and especially ought this rule to be adhered to, when such a construction would alter the pre-existing situation of parties, or would affect or interfere with their antecedent rights.” Williams v. Johnson, 30 Md. 500, 508 ; Shwab v. Doyle, 258 U. S. 529 , 42 S. Ct. 391 , 66 L. Ed. 747 . The Act of 1935 made no reference to awards in previous cases. On the contrary, it appears to contemplate only a prospective operation, for it provides that, to serve as beginnings of the periods of limitations, only those orders which shall have been designated as final shall be considered final. There was no such restriction in the law previously, no requirement that awards be so designated, and a new practice would naturally be prescribed only for the future, when it could be followed.

And it seems to the court there would be an inequality not likely to be intend ⁷⁵ ed in adding the three years’ limitation, found appropriate to future cases, to all old cases, especially those from before 1931, for which a one year limitation had already been provided. Russell v. United, States, 278 U. S. 181, 187 , 49 S. Ct.