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S. B. Thomas Inc. v. Thompson3/4/1997
ary to make out a prima facie case on the issue here being considered.
On this proposition, the Court of Appeals cited as authority the decision of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island in Valente v. Bourne Mills, 77 R.I. 274, 75 A.2d 191 (1950). It referred to the Valente case as "a leading one on the subject now under consideration" and then quoted it with approval:
"We concede that in the great majority of cases such testimony [testimony of experts] ordinarily is necessary because of the seeming absence of connection between a particular accident and a claimed resulting injury . But in other cases involving special and peculiar circumstances, medical evidence, although highly desirable, is not always essential for an injured employee to make out a prima facie case, especially if the testimony is adequate, undisputed and unimpeached. Thus where, as in the instant case, injury appears in a bodily member reasonably soon after an accident, at the very place where the force was applied and with symptoms observable to the ordinary person, there arises, in the absence of believed testimony to the contrary, a natural inference that the injury, whatever may be the medical name, was the result of the employment. Absolute certainty is not required in any case. If the reasonable probabilities flowing from the undisputed evidence disclose a progressive course of events beginning with an external accident in which each succeeding happening including the injury appears traceable to the one that preceded it medical evidence is not essential for an injured employee to make out a prima facie case."
D. The Synthesis :
Out of Wilhelm 's resolution of three efforts to prove a causal connection, two of which were resolved in one direction and the third in another, what, then, is the synthesis? It is impossible to frame any neat verbal formula that will prove readily dispositive of future cases. All such cases must be resolved on a case-by-case basis and the best that the case law can do is to articulate some general guidelines. Wilhelm undertook such an articulation, 230 Md. at 99-100:
There are, unquestionably, many occasions where the causal connection between a defendant's negligence and a disability claimed by a plaintiff does not need to be established by expert testimony. Particularly is this true when the disability develops coincidentally with, or within a reasonable time after, the negligent act, or where the causal connection is clearly apparent from the illness itself and the circumstances surrounding it, or where the cause of the injury relates to matters of common experience, knowledge, or observation of laymen. However, where the cause of an injury claimed to have resulted from a negligent act is a complicated medical question involving fact finding which properly falls within the province of medical experts . . . proof of the cause must be made by such witnesses. (Citations omitted).
By way of implementing such necessarily general guidelines, the best the case law can do is to provide a series of examples, some falling on one side of the legal sufficiency line and some on the other. At least, then, future cases will be able to subject themselves to a color-matching test, taking the proof that has been offered on the subject of causation in a particular case and then seeing which of the precedents it most closely resembles.
Jewel Tea Co., Inc. v. Blamble, 227 Md. 1, 174 A.2d 764 (1961), was actually decided one year before the Wilhelm case. In Jewel, an appeal had been taken from the then Workmen's Compensation Commission to the circuit court. The claimant, who had first suffered a job-related fall resulting in injury to both ankles and
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