Subsequent Injury Fund v. Deeds

Powers, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Subsequent Injury Fund appeals from the granting by the Circuit Court for Montgomery County of a motion by Richard A. Deeds for summary judgment in his favor in an appeal he took from an order of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission. Deeds had filed a claim with the Commission that he was injured October 18, 1965 while changing a tire on an automobile owned by his employer, Government Employees Insurance Company. After various hearings before the Commission it ruled on January 8, 1968 that Deeds had sustained temporary total disability which ended on January 30, 1967, and that any permanent partial disability he suffered was pre-existing. ³³⁷ In December 1956 Deeds was injured while employed as a Trooper by the Maryland State Police, and thereafter was found by the Commission to have sustained a permanent partial disability of 50%.

He was paid compensation on that basis. When the Commission in 1968 declined to order compensation for any permanent disability from the 1965 tire changing injury, Deeds appealed for a review in the circuit court. There, in June 1968 a jury found that he had, from the 1965 injury, 50% permanent partial disability of his lumbo-sacral area and 10% permanent partial disability of his left leg. When these findings were transmitted to the Commission, it passed a modified supplemental award against the employer and insurer for the disabilities found by the jury.

On October 23, 1969, it declined to award additional compensation against the Subsequent Injury Fund, giving as its reason that the Fund was not a party to the claim at the initial hearings nor in the court, and further proceedings against it would be res judicata. It was from this last order that Deeds appealed a second time to the circuit court and it is that case which is now before us. It is true that the Subsequent Injury Fund was not a “party” before the Commission or in the circuit court, for the very good reason that it had no capacity or standing to be a party. A similar chain of procedural steps, and the status of the Fund under Code, Art. 101, § 66 and § 56 were involved in Subsequent Injury Fund v. Howes, 11 Md. App. 325 .

We need not repeat what we said there. Again we have the incongruity of a circuit court appeal filed by a claimant against his employer and its insurer, neither of which has any interest in it; an appearance on behalf of the Fund as a “party” when it had no capacity to be a party; a motion by the claimant for a summary judgment “in his favor”, not specifying against what or whom; and the granting of that motion by the court. Under the provisions of Code, Art. 101, § 56 (a) effective April 23, 1969, we think the Fund could be an aggrieved person with the right to appeal from the circuit court to this court. ³³⁸ Appellant makes four points in its brief: 1. That the circuit court lacked jurisdiction to render