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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
which McAULIFFE and CHASANOW, JJ. join
I join in the Court's judgment, but not in the opinion, the rationale of which is, in my view, so expansive as to be legally incorrect.
The late Richard P. Gilbert, formerly Chief Judge of the Court of Special Appeals, and Robert L. Humphreys, Jr., in Maryland Workers' Compensation Handbook (1988), have synthesized a rule from the Maryland cases that should be applied here. At ยง 5.2, "Personal Injury ," those authors state:
"A review of case law shows that a compensable injury may be found whenever an accidental physiological change is found to have arisen out of and in the course of employment. There is no statutory nor decisional requirement that the injury arise concurrent to or immediately after the accident.
"The absence of a physiological change or physical harm or damage should preclude a finding that an injury occurred. For this reason, emotional or mental disorders are not properly classified as accidental injuries unless they arise from an accidental event and include a physiological component."
Id. at 85-86 (footnotes omitted).
In the instant matter, the accidental event requirement of this rule is dramatically satisfied. The requirement for a physiological change is also satisfied, at least to the extent that it was satisfied in Sargent v. Board of Educ. of Baltimore County, 49 Md. App. 577, 433 A.2d 1209(1981). Sargent involved a building custodian who was required to enter a boiler to clean it. "She blacked out for several hours, which is clearly a physiological reaction, and afterwards, was temporarily unable to maintain the composure necessary to continue her work." Id. at 584-85, 433 A.2d at 1213. The Commission awarded compensation, making "implicit in its decision that [the claimant] did suffer a physical change in response to her claustrophobic reaction to entering the boiler." Id. at 584, 433 A.2d at 1213. The Court of Special Appeals concluded "that there was sufficient evidence to support [the claimant's] contention that she suffered a physiological injury ." Id. Thus, the Sargent court, after having found error in a circuit court's conclusion that there was no accident, also rejected an alternate ground for
sustaining the circuit court's judgment by holding that the evidence of personal injury was sufficient.
In the instant matter the circuit court's ruling in favor of the employer is on summary judgment. The circuit court distinguished Sargent on the ground that the claimant here did not black out. There is, however, sufficient evidence to generate a factual issue that Belcher sustained physiological injury as the result of the accident. It could be found that, as a result of the accident, she suffered amnesia for several hours, was involuntarily shaking, became quite cold and was in shock, and that she suffers chest and shoulder pains, headaches, panic attacks, sleeplessness and nightmares. I would hold that this evidence generates a jury issue on physiological change. Certainly, Belcher's claim is more demonstrable than is a claim based on complaints of pain in the low back, allegedly resulting from an unusual, twisting motion at work, which can be compensable, if believed, even though the complaints cannot be objectively corroborated.
On the foregoing analysis, the instant matter is not a case in which there is "an injury solely to one's mind," unaccompanied by physical harm. 329 Md. 709, 721, 621 A.2d 872, 878 (1993). Consequently, there is no need to attempt to condense into a single phrase the body of
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