Huffman v. State

Menchine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal by Joseph B. Huffman from a judgment of the Baltimore City Court reversing a decision of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission. That judgment ⁷⁰⁵ denied appellant workmen’s compensation benefits from the State of Maryland, employer, and the State Accident Fund, insurer. Twenty two issues had been submitted to the Commission and twelve to the trial court on appeal.

This seeming complexity is more apparent than real, the issues requiring decision here being thus simply and briefly stated: 1. Is Joseph B. Huffman, a police officer of Baltimore City, entitled to the benefits provided by Article 101, the Workmen’s Compensation Law, as an employee of the State of Maryland, employer, and the State Accident Fund, insurer, for permanent total disability sustained while performing his official duties as a police officer of Baltimore City? Alternatively: 2. Is the State Accident Fund estopped to deny compensation benefits to Joseph B. Huffman because of Article 101, §65 in view of its issuance of insurance policy S-100 to the State of Maryland? and 3.

Did the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore have standing to prosecute an appeal from the Workmen’s Compensation Commission, and does that municipal corporation and its purported collective alter ego, Charles B. Benton, Jr., F. Pierce Linaweaver and John A. Luetkemeyer, Jr., have standing to intervene in the proceedings below and to participate in the appeal to this Court? The conceded facts are these: Joseph B. Huffman, a Baltimore City police officer, on October 3, 1967, was shot while attempting apprehension of a felon. The injury caused permanent total disability. Claim for compensation benefits was made against both the State of Maryland, as employer, and the State Accident Fund, as its insurer, and against the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, as employer and self-insurer.

The Workmen’s Compensation Commission ⁷⁰⁶ awarded compensation benefits to the claimant against the State of Maryland, employer, and the State Accident Fund, insurer, but disallowed the claim as to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. The State of Maryland, employer, and the State Accident Fund, insurer, entered an appeal to the Baltimore City Court from that decision of the Commission. The Mayor and City Council also appealed. Charles B. Benton, Jr., as Director of Finance; F. Pierce Linaweaver, as Director of Public Works, and John A. Luetkemeyer, Jr., as City Treasurer, acting through the City Solicitor and members of his staff, intervened in the proceedings in the Baltimore City Court.

Motions ne recipiatur contested both the right of the Mayor and City Council to appeal and the right of the individuals to intervene in the proceedings. Those motions were denied by a judge other than the trial judge to whom the substantive cause was submitted, but are before us as a subsidiary issue. On appeal from the Commission’s decision, the case was submitted to the court, without the aid of a jury. The trial court found as a matter of law that the appellant was not entitled to workmen’s compensation because he was not a “workman employed for wages” ■ within the meaning of Article 101, § 33.

The trial court also found as a matter of law that § 65 of Article 101, estopping, in certain circumstances, insurance carriers from asserting that employment was excluded from the provisions of Article 101, had no application to one in the claimant’s status. The State Accident Fund had issued, on August 31, 1949, its policy of insurance S-100 to the State of Maryland. The trial court held that such policy was not intended to protect and did not protect, members of the Baltimore City Police Department and thus did not bring the claimant within the purview of § 65. Entitlement to Benefits as an Empbyee of the State of Maryland Article 101, § 33, at the time of claimant’s injury, read in pertinent part as follows: “(a) Whenever the State, county, city or any ⁷⁰⁷ municipality shall engage in any extra-hazardous work, within the meaning of this article, whether for pecuniary gain or otherwise, in which workmen are employed for wages, this article shall be applicable thereto.

In time of peace and while engaged in military service all officers and enlisted men of the organized militia of the State of Maryland shall be deemed workmen of the State for wages within the meaning of this section; provided that, whenever and so long as provision equal to or better than that given under the terms of this article is made by the federal government for an employee of the military department of Maryland injured in the course of employment, such employee shall not be entitled to the benefit of this article. The officers of the Maryland State Police force, the Montgomery County and Prince George’s County Police, the police of the Town of Laurel, the police of all other municipal corporations in Prince George’s County which are subject to the provisions of Article 11E of the Constitution of Maryland, paid firemen employed by the fire departments of Prince George’s County, the regular members of the police force, the paid firemen, the engineers, and linemen of the electric light plant, of Frederick City, the members of the police department and of the fire department of the City of Cumberland, and all guards employed by any penal institutions of this State, shall be deemed workmen for wages within the meaning of this section.” In Harris v. City of Baltimore, 151 Md. 11 (1926), 133 A. 888 , the workmen’s compensation claim of a park policeman employed by Baltimore City, who possessed “the same powers that police in said city have as conservators of the peace,” was rejected by the Court of Appeals of Maryland as not covered by Article 101, § 33 (then § 35). At that time, the first paragraph of the section was in the identical language quoted. At that early date, the only ⁷⁰⁸ change grafted upon the section from the time of its passage was the addition of the words “whether for pecuniary gain or otherwise” (Ch. 303, Acts of 1922) and an extension embracing the State militia (Ch. 332, Acts of 1924).

The Court of Appeals commented on that circumstance, observing at page 25 [893]: “It certainly never occurred to the Legislature, when the Act of 1914 was passed, that a policeman, or a fireman, serving the State or a municipality or a member of the state militia, was a ‘workman employed for wages’ in the sense that an employee in a steel mill, or a coal miner, would be, and the act was not in our opinion intended to apply to employees of the State or a municipality engaged in such occupation. And it does not appear from any amendment to the original act, or from any source, that the Legislature has ever extended or widened its scope except in the specific instances to which we have referred. ” [Italics supplied] We are, of course, bound by the decision in Harris, supra, unless amendments to Article 101 in the interval between the effective consideration date of that case (June 29, 1925) and the date of the injury sustained by the claimant in this case (October 3,1967) have altered its weight and effect. In Shvanda v. City of Baltimore, 13 Md. App. 354 , 283 A. 2d 181 , this Court traced the legislative changes following the decision in Harris, supra, from 1925 to 1967, pointing out that thirteen amendments had been added declaring specific groups to be “workmen for wages” within the meaning of § 33. We then said at page 359 [183]: “We think it evident, both from the holding in Harris , as well as from the legislative history of Section 33 that appellant, as a Baltimore City fireman, does not come within the meaning of a workman for wages under Section 33.

The clear rationale of Harris , as explicated in Baltimore v. Dukes, supra, decided in 1967, ‘was predicated on ⁷⁰⁹ the essentially public and governmental function of a police officer as opposed to a “workman” who would normally be employed in the proprietary or non-governmental functions of the municipality.’ At p. 67. Because appellant, as a fireman, was not a conservator of the peace and may not have exercised the sovereign power of the State to the same degree as a policeman, does not mean that the Harris holding is not applicable to him. In his opinion Judge Liss held that no substantial distinction existed between the park policeman involved in Harris and a fireman acting in the exercise of his essentially public and governmental duties as an agent of the municipality. Judge Liss held that a uniformed fireman did exercise some portion of the sovereign powers of government and, in the sense contemplated by the Harris decision, we agree with that conclusion.

We note, moreover, that it was the purpose of the various amendments to Section 33, heretofore delineated, ‘to designate as “workmen for wages” certain employees who would not otherwise be so considered.’ Clauss v. Board of Education, 181 Md. 513, 517-518 . In that case, decided in 1943, the court stated at p. 517 that the amendments to Section 33 ‘were probably made to meet an early decision of this court that a park policeman employed by the Board of Park Commissioners of Baltimore City was not a “workman for wages,” ’ citing the Harris case. Subsequent to Clauss , the Legislature continued to amend Section 33 to bring within its coverage designated groups of governmental employees. If firemen or policemen were intended to be embraced within the term ‘workmen for wages’ under Section 33, then all of the amendments to that Section specially designating various groups of persons for inclusion within its coverage, including some paid firemen, would have been unnecessary.” ⁷¹⁰ No legislative change in § 33 of Article 101 followed our decision in Shvanda, supra.

Ch. 741 of the Acts of 1970 included police officers within the purview of the Workmen’s Compensation Law at the same time that other massive coverage changes in Article 101 were effected. Those changes took place after the date of the injury to the present claimant and do not assist his cause here. It is plain that no amendment to § 33 of Article 101 extended to persons in appellant’s occupation the benefits accorded by Article 101. We hold that'the rule of Harris, supra, was controlling at the time of this injury and the appellant is not entitled to workmen’s compensation benefits as an employee of the State of Maryland, employer, and the State Accident Fund, insurer.

Estoppel of the State Accident Fund to Deny Coverage Appellant alternatively urges that the State Accident Fund is estopped to deny him the benefits of the Workmen’s Compensation Law by reason of the provisions of Article 101, § 65. He points out that the- State Accident Fund on August 31, 1949 issued a policy of Workmen’s Compensation Insurance to the State -of Maryland. Article 101, § 65 reads as follows: “In any proceeding for the enforcement of a claim for compensation under this article on behalf of any employee, if the State Accident Fund or the insurance carrier, as the case may be, has accepted or is entitled to receive from his employer a premium or premiums on compensation insurance (either alone or in connection with other insurance) with respect to such employee, such fund or carrier shall be estopped from asserting, as a defense to such claim, that such employee was a casual employee or was not engaged in an extra-hazardous employment or that the employment is excluded from the provisions of this article or was not carried on for pecuniary gain.” ⁷¹¹ The insurance policy issued by the State Accident Fund (known as Policy S-100) reads as follows: “Policy of Insurance THE STATE ACCIDENT FUND HEREBY INSURES, in consideration of the payment of the premium on this policy as hereinafter provided The Insurance Provided THE STATE OF MARYLAND AND'ALL DEPARTMENTS OF THE GOVERNMENT THEREOF (hereinafter called ‘the insured employer’) whose principal place of business within the State of Maryland is situated at Annapolis, Maryland, against liability under Chapter 800 of the Acts of 1914 of the General Assembly of Maryland and the amendments thereto, known as the Workmen’s Compensation Law; Medical Aid INCLUDING the insured employer’s liability to furnish medical and other treatment and care of injured employees and officials as required by the Act, Employees.