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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
fundamental defense historically available since 1914 and applied uniformly by our courts over the past seventy-six years.
He observed:
A letter from the Legislative Analyst assigned to the Article Review Committee concedes that there is a potential problem with the proposed new definition of accidental injury if the Maryland Court of Appeals were to interpret the term "accidental injury" to include other than physical injuries.
He requested that the word "personal" be included in the definition of injury .
The Director of Industrial Relations of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce followed this with a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, in which, among a number of suggestions with respect to the revision of other laws, he said that the Chamber was "concerned about the deletion of the word 'personal' from the very basic defined term 'accidental personal injury ' in the workers' compensation title . . . . We continue to believe," he asserted, "that the use of the term 'accidental injury' leaves open the possible interpretation that the law is intended to compensate
for psychological damages as well as physical damages." He too urged "the use of the term 'accidental personal injury ' in the workers' compensation definitions."
We discovered in the legislative file a "Bill Analysis" prepared by the House Economic Matters Committee concerning HB 692. The "Summary" of the Analysis was: "This bill makes the technical changes and changes to cross-references made necessary by House Bill 1 (Code Revision)." It gave as the background of the bill:
This bill is a companion bill to House Bill 1 (Labor and Employment Article) bill and makes all the technical changes necessary to other portions of the Code that are affected by the Revision.
(Emphasis added). The Analysis explained that the Economic Matters Committee had appointed a Subcommittee on Code Revision that examined the proposed changes suggested at the hearing on HB 1. Among the "technical changes" the Subcommittee had accepted was
Argument that "Accidental injury " should be changed to "accidental personal injury " (proposed by the Maryland Chamber of Commerce) . . . .
The amici curiae take the insertion of the word "personal" back into the proposed statute as an indication of clear legislative intent not to permit compensation for mental trauma. We cannot perceive that the Legislature intend any such thing based on fears of what the Court of Appeals might do. As far as we are able to ascertain, the inclusion of the word "personal" was deemed by the Legislature as a mere "technical" change, not a substantive one. It cannot be taken as an expression of legislative intent to foreclose compensation for mental harm. Had the Legislature any doubt about the matter, it could very easily have declared that psychological harm is not compensable. The Overview to HB 1 noted that " by-product of the revision process is identification of substantive problems that exist in the law."
Although a code revision bill is not a vehicle for correcting substantive problems, they are discussed in notes following each section of the revision.
The Special Revisor's Note to § 9-101(b) headed "Accidental personal injury " did not suggest that there was a substantive problem with respect to the word "personal." The Note provides a plain explanation why the phrase "accidental personal injury " was used:
In the introductory language of [§ 9-101(b)], Chs. 8 and 21, Acts of 1991, deleted the former terms "injury," "personal injury," and "accidental injury" as unnecessary, since the term "ac
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