Stokes v. American Airlines, Inc.

SONNER, Judge. Lewis Stokes and his employer, American Airlines, Inc., return to this Court on a seven-year-old workers’ compensation claim. Stokes originally lost his claim before the Workers’ Compensation Commission, but won an award from a jury in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. We then published an opinion in February 1998, remanding the case to the Commission for reconsideration.

American Airlines Corp. v. Stokes, 120 Md.App. 350 , 707 A.2d 412 (1998) (“Stokes I”). Thereafter, the Commission granted Stokes a compensation award, but, on petition for judicial review, 1 the circuit ⁴⁴³ court ruled, as a matter of law, that he was not entitled to any award. That judgment violated the mandate of Stokes I. Accordingly, we reverse it and remand for further proceedings in the circuit court. Stokes I On August 5, 1994, Lewis Stokes injured his back while unloading baggage from an American Eagle plane.

About five months later, he filed a claim for workers’ compensation against American. Stokes testified at the Commission hearing, along with three of American’s supervisors and one of its employees. The testimony focused on Stokes’s conduct before and after the alleged injury; no medical experts testified. Stokes did submit, as exhibits, the progress reports of the physician, radiologist, and chiropractor who treated him between August 1994 and January 1995.

These reports indicated that Stokes suffered a “lumbar radiculopathy,” but did not examine the cause of the problem. The Commission denied Stokes’s claim, finding that he did not sustain an accidental injury in the course of his employment and that the alleged injury did not cause his subsequent back pain. Stokes petitioned the circuit court for review and requested a jury trial. The jury exercised de novo review, although it was instructed to treat the Commission’s decision as presumptively correct.

See Md.Code (1991, 1999 RepLVol.), Lab. & Empl. § 9-745(b)(l). Again, Stokes testified and offered his physician’s reports, but did not present any expert medical testimony. American responded with the videotaped deposition of a physician, who denied any causation between Stokes’s injury and subsequent disability. Apparently persuaded by Stokes’s evidence, however, the jury reversed the Commission’s order and awarded him compensation from August 5, 1994 through March 20, 1996.

American then moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, arguing that Stokes failed to present sufficient evidence of an accidental injury and any causation between the injury and later disability. That motion was denied. American appealed the denial of its motion to this Court. We upheld the jury’s determination that Stokes suffered an ⁴⁴⁴ accidental injury, but reversed its nineteen-month award of compensation.

In our view, whether Stokes’s injury caused a compensable disability was a complicated medical question, which could result in an affirmative answer only if an expert guided the jury to that end. We specifically noted three factors that negated Stokes’s claim: (1) procedurally, the jury was required to treat the Commission’s decision as presumptively correct; (2) the evidence documented his long history of chronic back deterioration; and (3) the lone medical expert that testified for the defense discounted the alleged link between the injury and the disability. Against the weight of those factors, Stokes’s evidence was, in our opinion, too light to justify a verdict in his favor. Having upheld the jury’s finding of an injury, but not its calculation of disability, we could have reversed the circuit court’s judgment outright.

Maryland Rule 8-604(d), however, also allowed us to remand the matter if the “substantial merits” of the case called for something other than affirmance, reversal, or modification. We chose to remand the case because, while Stokes failed to link his injury to the nineteen-month period of disability, we thought he might be able to link the injury to a shorter span of time, which might entitle him to a lesser amount of compensation. Specifically, we stated: Although, as we have held, there was no legally sufficient case to connect the accident of August 5 to the subsequent back condition that was the basis of the appellee’s claim for temporary total disability benefits from August 5, 1994 through March 20, 1996, there was arguably nonetheless a sustainable claim for some more minimal award for the injury of August 5 itself and for the more immediate sequelae associated with it. We will, therefore, remand the case to the Workers’ Compensation Commission for that more limited reconsideration.

Stokes, 120 Md.App. at 369 , 707 A.2d 412 . Stokes II The Commission presided over a second hearing in September 1999. As far as we can tell from the record, Stokes did ⁴⁴⁵ not present any new evidence regarding his injury and disability, other than to submit updated reports from his treating physician. 2 With our decision in hand, however, the Commission reversed its earlier determination and found that Stokes suffered an accidental injury on August 5, 1994, which caused a temporary total disability from that date until April 11,1995. Essentially, the Commission reduced the jury’s award from nineteen months to eight months. 3 American petitioned the circuit court for review and moved for summary judgment.

Stokes /, it argued, confirmed that there was an accidental injury, but no causal link between the injury and the disability, and without that link, there could be no compensation award. American read the mandate in Stokes I as a call for a formal order by the Commission asserting an injury, but denying an award. Stokes responded with what we have indicated was the correct reading