DeBusk v. Johns Hopkins Hospital

KARWACKI, Judge. Under the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Act, an employee accidentally injured on the job must file a claim for workers’ compensation benefits within two years of the date of “the accidental personal injury” or any claim arising out of that injury is completely barred. In the case before us, petitioner contends that the statutory language “accidental personal injury” should be interpreted as the date the petitioner knew or should have known that she had a compensable injury. We disagree.

The two-year workers’ compensation statute of limitations on claims for accidental injuries on the job runs from the date of the actual accident causing the injury. Since petitioner filed her claim for benefits two years and one month after the date of her accidental injury, her claim is barred. I. Karen DeBusk was a registered nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital (hereinafter “the Hospital”) in Baltimore City. On October 3, 1990, DeBusk was adjusting the bed of a patient when the bed tilted, and DeBusk, thinking the bed was collapsing, grabbed the bed and held it up.

She released her hold on the bed after only a few moments when a co-worker coming to her aid told her the bed was not collapsing, but at the time of the incident she felt a minor strain in her neck and right shoulder. She informed her supervisor of the incident but continued to work through the end of her shift. 1 During the next two months, DeBusk continued to work all of her scheduled shifts, missing no days but experiencing ⁴³⁵ regular minor discomfort in her neck and shoulder. After two months, on December 6, 1990, DeBusk went to the Johns Hopkins Hospital Workers’ Compensation Clinic to have her shoulder and neck checked by a doctor. The examination and x-rays showed nothing remarkable and DeBusk continued her regular work duties without interruption.

A few months later, because the pain and discomfort continued and intensified, DeBusk began visiting a chiropractor, who treated her for approximately eighteen months. On July 24, 1992, tests on DeBusk’s neck and arm indicated some disc herniation and evidence of a spur on the spine. She filed a workers’ compensation claim with the Workers’ Compensation Commission (hereinafter “the Commission”) on November 10, 1992, citing an injured neck and back and setting the accident date as October 3, 1990. On the employee claim form for the Commission, DeBusk described the accident causing her injury thus: “Description of Accident or How Occupational Disease Occurred While lowering electric bed, bed frame became unbalanced and tilted and I heard a loud noise startling both me and patient in the bed.

To prevent patient from falling out I attempted to hold the bed level while calling for assistance.” The Commission ruled that DeBusk’s claim was barred by the two-year statute of limitations on accidental injury workers’ compensation claims, found in Maryland Code (1957, 1991 Repl.Vol.), § 9-709 of the Labor & Employment Article. 2 DeBusk appealed to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, arguing that the limitations period did not begin to run on the ⁴³⁶ date of the accident itself, but rather on the date she knew or should have known that she had a compensable injury. She set that date as December 6, 1990, the date she first saw a doctor for the pain in her neck. The circuit court rejected her interpretation of the statutory language, however, and granted summary judgment for the Hospital. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the summary judgment ruling of the trial court in DeBusk v. Johns Hopkins Hospital, 105 Md.App. 96 , 658 A.2d 1147 (1995), holding first that the claim was indeed barred by the two-year statute of limitations found in § 9-709, and further that the statute was constitutional under both the United States Constitution and the Maryland Declaration of Rights.

DeBusk sought certiorari review of the intermediate appellate court’s decision on both questions, which we granted.

II

Petitioner Debusk asks us to read the language of § 9-709 to mean that the limitations period begins to run from the ⁴³⁷ date that a worker becomes aware that he or she has a compensable injury. She contends that our interpretation of § 9-709’s pre-1957 predecessor statute of limitations in Griffin v. Rustless Iron & Steel Co., 187 Md. 524 , 51 A.2d 280 (1947) is still applicable. In Griffin we held that the limitations period began to run “from the time when disability becomes, or should become, reasonably apparent.” Id. at 540 , 51 A.2d at 288 . As we discuss infra, a number of cases followed Griffin in the next decade, also interpreting the pre-1957 statute, which picked up the Griffin line of reasoning and further clarified that an injury which was latent or trivial would not trigger the limitations period.

In its opinion rejecting DeBusk’s challenge, the Court of Special Appeals relied on the change in statutory language which occurred in 1957, as well as the intermediate appellate court’s reasoning in Dintaman v. Bd. of County Comm’rs of Prince George’s County, 17 Md.App. 345 , 303 A.2d 442 (1973). The Dintaman court held that the Legislature in 1957 clearly intended the date of the accident, regardless of the trivial or latent nature of the injury at that time, to be the date the two-year limitations period begins. The intermediate appellate court in the instant case agreed, further holding that amendments to the statute since 1957 have not altered the original intention of the 1957 revision. We have taken into account the history of the statute of limitations in workers’ compensation, the principles upon which the workers’ compensation system is grounded, the clear language of the statute, and case law, and we cannot accept DeBusk’s interpretation. a.

The Workers’ Compensation Act, Md.Code (1957, 1991 Repl.Vol., 1995 Cum.Supp.), § 9-101 et seq. of the Labor & Employment Article (hereinafter “the Act”), was designed to provide employees with compensation for loss of earning capacity, regardless of fault, resulting from accidental injury, disease, or death occurring in the course of employment. Queen v. Agger, 287 Md. 342, 343 , 412 A.2d 733, 733-34 (1980); ⁴³⁸ Howard, County Ass’n for Retarded Citizens v. Walls, 288 Md. 526, 531 , 418 A.2d 1210, 1214 (1980); Bethlehem-Sparrows Point Shipyard v. Damasiewicz, 187 Md. 474, 480 , 50 A.2d 799, 802 (1947). Compensation awarded on this fault-free basis under the statutory plan substitutes for an employee’s common law right to bring a fault-based tort suit against an employer for damages resulting from the employee’s injury or disablement on the job. See § 9-509 of the Act (compensation provided to a covered employee under the Act replaces any right of action against any person, including the employer); Brady v. Parsons Co., 327 Md. 275, 279 , 609 A.2d 297, 298-99 (1992); Gray v. State Roads Comm’n, 253 Md. 421, 427-28 , 252 A.2d 810, 812 (1969); Unsatisfied Claim Bd. v. Salvo, 231 Md. 262, 264 , 189 A.2d 638, 639 (1963); Baltimore Transit Co. v. State, 183 Md. 674, 677 , 39 A.2d 858, 859 (1944).

Gone are the days when an injured employee had to bring an uncertain and potentially expensive lawsuit against his employer, face numerous common law defenses which operated in favor of the employer, and often lose the suit in the end. Employees who follow the procedural rules of the Act and can prove they were injured while working can almost certainly recover compensation to prevent undue hardships caused by loss of wages and medical expenses. Employers who purchase workers’ compensation insurance and otherwise comply with the law of workers’ compensation can likewise count on avoiding a negligence lawsuit. Courts and commentators over the decades have noted how the Act strikes a important balance between the need to provide some form of financial benefits to injured or sick employees and the need, of both employers and employees, to avoid expensive and unpredictable litigation over accidents in the workplace.

See Richard P. Gilbert & Robert L. Humphreys, Jr., Maryland Workers’ Compensation Handbook §§ 1.0-1.2 (2d ed. 1993 & Supp. 1996). Predictability and administrative ease, in the workers’ compensation statutory plan as in all things, come at the price of some flexibility in unique or unusual circumstances. Objective standards and bright-line rules such as statutes of limitations ⁴³⁹ are the very keys to predictability, in the sense that everyone is treated in the same manner and everyone knows or can discover the rules in advance of their application. By their very nature, though, such rules and standards cannot make exceptions for every scenario which might arise.

First, no lawmaker could construct a statute which foresaw each individual application of the statute and exception which might present itself. In addition, a statute which attempted to address not only the rule but all its possible exceptions would likely lose its valuable characteristic of predictability, because it would be that much more subject to manipulation in a courtroom than a statute which merely stated the rule and any major exceptions. Moreover, bright-line rules by definition cannot depend upon a factfinder’s case-by-case assessment of the subjective knowledge of a person. A statute of limitations which is triggered by an externally verifiable date is a classic example of an objective, bright-line rule which fosters predictable outcomes in otherwise unpredictable situations.

During the summary judgment hearing in circuit court, DeBusk argued that the case-by-case discovery rule for tort actions 3 which we enunciated in Poffenberger v. Risser, 290 Md. 631, 636 , 431 A.2d 677, 680 (1981), should also apply to workers’ compensation claims: “Now it seems to me totally irrational to have in civil actions one standard—that is, the discovery rule applies, and in a workers’ compensation claim, which is supposed to be liberally construed, supposed to be passed for employees, a strict application where a claimant must, whether he knows or doesn’t know he has a compensable claim, he must file a claim within two years from the date of accident, whether you know you’ve got a problem or don’t have a problem.... In looking at the statute, I suggest, it doesn’t make any sense in terms of what the objective of the Workers’ Compensation Act is.” ⁴⁴⁰ We disagree with DeBusk that an objective, clearly defined statute of limitations for workers’ compensation claims is “totally irrational”; to the contrary, predictability such as provided by a strict statute of limitations is the cornerstone of the workers’ compensation statutory scheme. Section 9-709 of the Labor & Employment Article (see footnote 2) is just such a statute. An employee has two years “from the date of the accidental personal injury” to bring a claim; any claim under the Act is “completely barred” if the employee fails to bring a claim within that time period. 4 Our interpretation of “the date of accidental personal injury” is the date of the accident causing the personal injury.

Such an interpretation is consonant not only with the plain meaning of the words, but also with the principle of predictability underlying the entire statutory scheme of workers’ compensation. The date of an accident can in general be externally verified and known to all without a fact-finding process. On the other hand, the date an employee became aware, or should have become aware, that he or she had a compensable injury can truly be known only to the employee. If the defendant employer or insurance company challenges the employee’s version of when awareness of a compensable injury began, the date must be determined through some significant fact-finding process involving presentation of evidence to an official fact-finder and an unpredictable outcome.

If we read § 9-709 as the petitioner asks, merely the process of determining when the limitations period began could be as or more cumbersome and time-consuming than the actual resolution of the claim. We will not strain the meaning of the plain words in order to reach an outcome the Legislature could not have intended. b. The legislative history of the statute confirms our interpretation. The General Assembly stressed the value of a bright- ⁴⁴¹ line statute of limitations in workers’ compensation accidental injury cases in 1957, when it revised the existing statute to provide that the limitations period ran from the date of the accident rather than the date of the disability.

Section 38 of Article 101 of the Md.Code (1951) originally provided that a worker who failed to file a claim for compensation within a year “after the beginning of his disability” was completely barred from making any workers’ compensation claim. The term “beginning of his disability” proved to be a source of repetitive litigation; this Court alone considered numerous cases concerning pre-1957 workers’ compensation claims in which we attempted to define when a claimant knew or should have known he or she had a disability. Often we made a distinction as to the date the limitations period began to run based on whether the injury was “latent or trivial,” and generally we allowed such claims as the petitioner makes before us in the instant case, reasoning that the compensable “disability” did not necessarily occur when the actual accident occurred. E.g., Griffin v. Rustless Iron & Steel Co., 187 Md. 524 , 51 A.2d 280 (1947) (the period of limitations runs from the time that the disability becomes, or should become, apparent, excluding “trivial” disabilities); Baltimore Steel Co. v. Burch, 187 Md. 209 , 49 A.2d 542 (1946) (where injury at time of accident was slight and did not cause employee to miss work, period of limitations ran from the date the injury was compensable and not from the date of the accident); Cumberland Motor Sales v. Hilliker, 210 Md. 70 , 122 A.2d 329 (1956) (statute of limitations begins to run against worker as soon as it becomes or should become reasonably apparent to him that he has a compensable disability of any class arising from an accident); Eastern Shore Pub.

Serv. Co. v. Young, 218 Md. 338 , 146 A.2d 884 (1958) (limitations begin to run when injury occurs unless injury is latent or trivial). In 1957, the Legislature amended the Act, enacting § 39 in lieu of § 38. Section 39(a) of Art. 101 read: “(a) Accidental injury; report of physician; failure to file application as bar.—When an employee is entitled to benefits under this article, he shall file with the Commission his ⁴⁴² application and the report of his physician, provided he was attended by a physician of his own selection, within sixty days after the date of his accidental injury, for which compensation is claimed, and failure to do so, unless excused by the Commission, either on the ground that the insurance carrier or the employer has not been prejudiced thereby, or for some other sufficient reason, shall be a bar to any claim under this article; provided, however, that failure of an employee to file a claim for compensation within eighteen months[ 5 ] from the date of the accident shall constitute a complete bar to any claim under this article. ” (Emphasis and footnote added.) We glean from this significant alteration in the language triggering the limitations period, from “beginning of his disability” to “date of the accident,” that the General Assembly clearly intended to eliminate or at least reduce the controversy and litigation over the inception of the limitations period by setting an externally verifiable date.

Our analysis of the legislative intent is supported by an eminent authority on Maryland workers’ compensation law and by the Court of Special Appeals in the only case addressing this particular issue since the amendment of the statute. See Maurice J. Pressman, Workmen’s Compensation in Maryland, § 3-15 (1977); Dintaman v. Bd. of County Comm’rs of