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King v. District of Columbia Department of Employment Services12/16/1999
a couple of weeks. In his decision, the hearing examiner noted that King "first sought treatment for back pain in 1984," approximately two years before he commenced his employment with Moonlighting. One of King's treating physicians classified King's problem as a degenerative disk disease with bulging disks that might at some future date require surgical intervention.
King claimed that on April 11, 1994, when his back pain made it impossible for him to continue working, he sustained an accidental, work-related injury which aggravated his pre-existing back condition. He based this claim on his testimony that "I was working, and the pain and irritation of lifting cable and stuff finally just had got to be too much for me to take." King offered no further evidence as to what (if any) activity or event on April 11 triggered the increased back pain that he experienced, or as to the nature of the work he was performing when he became disabled. In the absence of such evidence, King relied upon the presumption embodied in D.C. Code § 36-321 (1) of a causal connection between his disability and a work-related event.
In opposition to King's claim, Moonlighting and ITT Hartford denied that King sustained an injury at work on April 11 and denied that his disability was work-related at all. They argued that the medical evidence showed that King had back problems that pre-dated his employment, and that he became disabled simply because his back condition degenerated naturally to the point where he was no longer able to work.
In his decision denying King's claim, the hearing examiner made no finding as to whether King's back injury and disability were, in fact, work-related, either because King sustained an aggravating injury on April 11 or because over time the physical exertion of his job subjected his back to cumulative trauma and consequent gradual injury. The examiner likewise made no finding as to the time of any work-related back injury that King may have sustained. Nor did the examiner make a finding as to when, if ever, King knew or should have known that his back pain was related to his work.
The hearing examiner found it unnecessary to resolve these and similar questions because he concluded as a threshold matter that King's claim was outside the coverage of the WCA. Ignoring King's claim that he suffered an aggravating injury on April 11, and assuming (without deciding) that King's disability resulted from a "cumulative trauma," the examiner said that there was "no definitive date of injury which would bring this matter within the ambit" of the coverage provisions of D.C. Code § 36-303 (a). The examiner did not explain how he arrived at this conclusion, but he apparently considered § 36-303 (a) to be inapplicable because it provides that coverage partially depends on the time of the injury and whether the injury occurred inside or outside the District of Columbia.
The examiner thereupon stated (again, without explanation) that "the jurisdictional question herein is resolved pursuant to the pre-March 6, 1991 law," i.e., the law in effect prior to the effective date of the last amendment of § 36-303. Under former § 36-303 (a), an injury was covered by the WCA only if, "at the time" of the injury, the employment was "principally localized in the District of Columbia," regardless of whether the injury occurred inside or outside the District. Applying the three-prong Hughes test, the examiner found that "the geographical contacts between claimant's employment relationship and the state of Maryland are more substantial, qualitatively and quantitatively, than those same contacts between claimant's employment relationship and any other jurisdiction." Accordingly,
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