Davis v. Avnet

Markell, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from an order overruling a demurrer to the bill of complaint. The bill alleges that: Some 500 employees of American Smelting and Refining Company filed with defendants, the Maryland Employment Security Board (then the Unemployment Compensation Board), claims for unemployment compensation. A number of claims were allowed by the Board.

The decision of the Board was ⁶²⁸ reversed on appeal. The order of the court was reversed in part by this court. Tucker v. American Smelting and Refining Company, 189 Md. 250 , 55 A. 2d 692 . Plaintiffs (and another) were employed as counsel by claimants and acted as such at the hearing before the Board, and on the appeal to the court and the subsequent appeal to this court.

The Board, after the hearing before it, approved a counsel fee of $5 for each claimant. After the hearing in this court the Board approved a fee of $10 {i. e., $5 additional) for each claimant for services before the Board, in the lower court and in this court. Plaintiffs requested the Board to pay them “out of the checks and payments due each of the claimants,” $10 as plaintiffs’ counsel fee, but the Board refused to do so. Plaintiffs then made an “arrangement” with the Board whereby distribution of payments to claimants would be made in groups, at specified times and places, and plaintiffs would be notified thereof and permitted to be present and the Board would apprise each claimant of its approval of counsel fees, and “so make it feasible” for plaintiffs to collect their fees “from each claimant as he was being paid”; “pursuant to said arrangement” payments were made to about 150 claimants in the presence of plaintiffs, and plaintiffs were enabled then and there to collect their fees from “most of the claimants”. “Without any just cause, reason or explanation” the Board “nullified, revoked and abrogated” the “arrangement” with plaintiffs and thereafter made payments to a number of claimants, without apprising them of its approval of the counsel fee and without giving plaintiffs “proper opportunity to effectively obtain such payment”, and thus deprived plaintiffs of the opportunity to collect the counsel fee approved by the Board.

The Board has refused and continues to refuse all “alternative proposals” by plaintiffs which would effectively enable them to collect their fees, and has made and is continuing to make further payments to claimants without adhering to the “original agreement” with plaintiffs. As a consequence, plaintiffs are unable to collect their fees and are and ⁶²⁹ will be deprived of their lawful compensation without any adequate remedy at law. The bill prays (1) an injunction pendente lite against any further payments by the Board to claimants who have not paid the counsel fee approved by the Board, (2) that the Board be ordered to deduct $10 from the payments due each claimant who has not yet paid the counsel fee, and pay it over to plaintiffs as their fee, (3) a declaratory decree that plaintiffs are entitled to have the fee approved by the Board paid to them out of the benefit payments due or to become due to each claimant, (4) in the alternative, that the Board “be ordered to carry out and perform the original agreement and arrangement” between it and plaintiffs, and (5) general relief. Throughout the allegations and prayers of the bill the fee approved by the Board is referred to as “awarded” by the Board or an “award” by the Board.

The supporting exhibits show that the Board only approved fees and did not attempt to “award” them. Under the Unemployment Compensation Law the Board has no power to “award” fees but only to approve the amount of them. Section 9 (c) of the act provides: “(c) (Withdrawals.) Moneys shall be requisitioned from this State’s account in the unemployment trust fund solely for the payment of benefits and for the payment of refunds pursuant to Sections 14 (b) and 19(g) (7) (B) and in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Board * * Section 15(b) and (c) provide: “(b) (Limitation of Fees.) * * * Any individual claiming benefits in any proceeding