Roynon v. Janet's Cleaning Service

BLOOM, Judge. This worker’s compensation case involves an unusual situation in which the jurisdiction of the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Commission (Commission) over a claim for compensation for an injury sustained by a worker in Maryland is dependent upon an interpretation of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of a sister state. The Commission ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to make an award of compensation to appellant, Anna M. Roynon, and the Circuit Court for Montgomery County affirmed the Commission. In her appeal to this Court, Ms. Roynon presents the following issue: Whether a Virginia resident, injured in Maryland while working for a Virginia employer under an employment contract entered into in Virginia, is eligible for benefits under the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act?

Our answer to that question is in the affirmative; therefore, we will reverse the judgment of the circuit court. ⁵⁵⁷ Facts Appellant and Janet Baber, the proprietress of Janet’s Cleaning Service, appellee, are both residents of Virginia. The contract of employment by which appellant was hired by appellee to perform cleaning services throughout the metropolitan District of Columbia area was made in Virginia. On 6 May 1983 appellant was working in Silver Spring, Maryland, cleaning vacant apartments, when she was assaulted and injured by a co-worker. Three months later, appellant filed a claim for compensation with the Workmen’s Compensation Commission of Maryland.

The Commission issued an order awarding benefits but subsequently granted appellee’s motion for reconsideration and then issued a new order rescinding the prior award. The final Commission order was based upon its determination that it had no jurisdiction over appellant’s claim. On appeal to it, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County affirmed the Commission’s decision, whereupon the employee noted this appeal. Provisions of the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act Exempting Certain Employers and Employees from the Act Md.Code Ann. art. 101, § 21(c)(4) (1985 Repl.

Vol.), exempts from coverage under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of this state nonresident employers and employees while temporarily or intermittently in Maryland if certain conditions are met. It provides in pertinent part: An employee and his employer who are not residents of this State and whose contract of hire is entered into in another state shall be exempted from the provisions of this article while such employee is temporarily or intermittently within this State doing work for such nonresident employer, if such employer has furnished workmen’s compensation insurance coverage under the workmen’s compensation or similar laws of such other state, so as to cover such employee’s employment while in this State; provided the extraterritorial provisions of this article are ⁵⁵⁸ recognized in such other state and provided employers and employees who are covered in this State are likewise exempted from the application of the workmen’s compensation or similar laws of such other state. There is no dispute about most of those conditions. Both employer and employee are residents of Virginia; the employment agreement was made in Virginia; the employee was injured while only temporarily in Maryland; and the employer furnished worker’s compensation insurance covering her employees while working in Maryland as well as Virginia.

With respect to the provision concerning recognition of extraterritoriality, the statute is not a model of clarity. Art. 101 does have extraterritorial effect in that injuries sustained by a Maryland employee outside the state (unless the employee was hired or is regularly employed outside the state) will be compensable under the Maryland Act. The purpose of the reciprocal exemption provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Acts of Maryland and the several other states which have adopted similar statutory language 1 is to recognize the dominant interest of the “home state” of the injured workman in exercising worker’s compensation jurisdiction by yielding the jurisdiction of the state of injury. See F. Storke and D. Sears, Reciprocal Exemption Provisions of Workmen’s Compensation Acts, 67 Yale Law Journal 982. 2 Essential to relinquishment of jurisdiction by the state in which the injury occurred is the existence in the compensation law of the “home state” (state of domicile) of the injured worker of similar extrater ⁵⁵⁹ ritoriality.

Id. In other words, Maryland will not exempt a sister state’s employee from the operation of the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act with reference to an injury sustained in Maryland unless that injured employee would be covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act of his own state. Here, since the reciprocal extraterritorial provision of the Virginia Workmen’s Compensation Act (Virginia Code § 65.1-61 (1980 Repl. Vol.)) is comparable in scope and effect to that of the Maryland Act, the requirement of reciprocal extraterritoriality of the compensation law of the employee’s “home state” is met.

But the mutual exercise of extraterritoriality, although central to the purpose of the exemption provisions, does not meet the requirement of mutual recognition by sister states of the extraterritorial effect of each other’s compensation laws. Article 101, § 21(c)(4) provides that employers and employees from a sister state are exempt from the Maryland Act “provided the extraterritorial provisions of this article are recognized in such other state and provided employers and employees who are covered in this State are likewise exempted from the application of the workmen’s compensation or similar laws of such other state.” At first glance it would appear that this language sets forth two separate conditions: (1) recognition by the sister state of the extraterritorial effects of the Maryland statute, and (2) reciprocity of exemption. Upon analysis, however, we see that in reality the quoted language establishes but a single condition. There would appear to be only one way that State A can afford recognition to the extraterritorial effects of State B’s compensation laws, and that is by exempting the citizens of State B from the requirements of the compensation laws of State A. Maryland will exempt from the operation of its Workmen’s Compensation Act citizens of Virginia injured in Maryland only if Virginia, by exempting from its compensation laws Maryland workers injured in Virginia, would ⁵⁶⁰ recognize Maryland’s right to apply the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act to its own citizens.

Language almost identical to that of § 21(c)(4) of the Maryland Act is contained in § 71-3-109(3) of the Workmen’s Compensation Act of Mississippi. In La Dew v. La Borde, 216 Miss. 598 , 63 So.2d 56 (1953), the Supreme Court of that state held that a Louisiana employee injured in Mississippi was entitled to the benefits of the Mississippi compensation law despite the exemption provisions of § 71-3-109(3) (then § 49(c)) thereof. The Court’s discussion of extraterritoriality or availability of Louisiana’s compensation law to the worker and the reciprocal exemption and recognition of extraterritoriality language of the Mississippi statute reflects the interrelationship between those concepts. Dealing first with the matter of mutuality of extension or extraterritoriality, the Court, after noting that coverage under the Louisiana Compensation Act was questionable, said: We think it was the purpose and intent of our legislature to exempt employers and employees from the coverage of the act, by Sec. 49(c), only when it is clearly shown that the employee will have an available remedy for his injury under the similar statute of another state.

It will not suffice to show that he may possibly, or even probably, have such relief there. 63 So.2d 58 (emphasis in original). Then, with respect to the reciprocity of exemption language of the Mississippi Act, the Court added: But, whether or not appellants could be said, on this record, to have shown that appellee would have a remedy in Louisiana under the compensation statute of that state, there is another and more potent reason why the Mississippi statute applies in this case, notwithstanding Sec. 49(c). We have been unable to find any provision in the Louisiana Act whereby that state recognizes the extraterritorial provisions of Chap. 354, Laws of 1948, and ⁵⁶¹ exempts employers and employees who are covered in this state. Id. at 58-59 .

The Virginia Compensation Act Having already satisfied ourselves that there are extraterritoriality provisions in the Workmen’s Compensation Act of Virginia that extend the benefits of that Act to employees injured outside of Virginia, we turn now to the question of whether Virginia affords Maryland employers and employees an exemption from the Virginia Act equivalent to the reciprocal exemptions available to nonresidents under the Maryland Act. The circuit court determined, as did the Commission, that Virginia does grant such an exemption. That determination, however, was not based on any language to be found in the Virginia Act, since that statute provides no exemptions based on