Vaughan v. Mayor of Baltimore

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant Vaughan was a firefighter in the Fire Department of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and a member of the Employees’ Retirement System of the City who was denied accidental disability benefits upon retirement by the Board of Trustees of the System, and by the Baltimore City Court in its dismissal of his petition for mandamus against the Board. Subsection 5 of Section 6 of Article 23 of the Baltimore City Code (1950 Ed.) provides that if a member of the Retirement System had been totally and permanently incapacitated for duty ⁵⁴⁹ “as the natural and proximate result of an accident occurring while in the actual performance of duty at some definite time and place, without wilful negligence on his part,” he shall be retired and under Subsection 6 of Section 6 and receive a pension of sixty-six and two-thirds per cent of his average final compensation. If retirement is ordinary, that is, not caused by accidental injury, the maximum pension is one-quarter of the average final compensation.

This Court has held that, both in cases under the ordinance quoted above and compensation cases, an injury, to be accidental, must result from some unusual strain or exertion of the employee or some unusual condition in the employment. Adams v. Board of Trustees, 215 Md. 188 , 196 cf. Heaps v. Cobb, 185 Md. 372, 383 . On December 13, 1960, Vaughan suffered a heart attack while shovelling snow from the driveways and sidewalks adjacent to the premises of Engine Company No. 54, at Mary Avenue and Belair Road, where he was stationed. He filed an application for accidental disability retirement, claiming that he had had an accident during the performance of his duty when he suffered the heart attack.

The Board, after a hearing, denied his application. Although it found he was suffering from arteriosclerotic heart disease and probably had sustained a coronary infarction while he was engaged in his usual employment, and was disabled, a majority concluded that the infarction was not the natural and proximate result of an accident but rather the result of the normal progress of arteriosclerotic heart disease from which he suffers. Vaughan filed a petition for mandamus against the Board, praying that the members be directed to approve his claim. Judge Foster, applying the standards spelled out in the Heaps and Adams cases, found the Board’s challenged action to be supported by evidence and not arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable.

The court pointed out that, if indeed it was not conceded, the record supported the common knowledge that it is one of the usual duties of a firefighter to shovel snow in order to keep the aprons and walkways about a firehouse always clear so the equipment will be able to roll at all times, as the regulations of the Fire Department require. Judge Foster held that although snow removal obviously was not a daily or a monthly ⁵⁵⁰ activity, it was part of the regular, usual and ordinary duties of a fire fighter and not unusual or extra work, so that it could not be said that Vaughan’s disability was caused by some unusual or extraordinary condition in his employment not