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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
nd them to be persuasive. So it behooves us to determine the propriety of the intermediate appellate court's statutory interpretation of "injury" as used in the Act.
IV
A
As we have seen, the Act does not define "injury" in terms of physical or mental trauma, and what the Legislature intended in that respect is not apparent from the language of the Act. So we are called upon once again to divine what the Legislature meant when it spoke of "accidental personal injury ." We turned first to see how our predecessors on this Court viewed the term "accidental personal injury ."
We began our review with Schemmel v. Gatch & Sons etc. Co., 164 Md. 671, 166 A. 39(1933) and then examined
what we believe to be a fair sampling of cases touching on the question decided thereafter. We then reviewed discussions of "injury" in the context of compensation under the Act in the following cases: Moller Motor Car Co. v. Unger, 166 Md. 198, 170 A. 777(1934); Geipe, Inc. v. Collett, 172 Md. 165, 190 A. 836(1937); Jackson v. Ferree, 173 Md. 400, 196 A. 107(1938); Foble v. Knefely, 176 Md. 474, 6 A.2d 48(1939); Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co. v. Zapf, 192 Md. 403, 64 A.2d 139(1949); Kelly-Springfield Co. v. Daniels, 199 Md. 156, 85 A.2d 795(1952); Caled Products Co., Inc. v. Sausser, 199 Md. 514, 86 A.2d 904(1952); Greenwalt v. Brauns Bdg. Sp . Corp., 203 Md. 313, 100 A.2d 804(1953); Stancliff v. H.B. Davis Co., 208 Md. 191, 117 A.2d 577(1955); Beth. Steel Co. v. Golombieski, 231 Md. 124, 188 A.2d 923 (1963); Giant Food, et al. v. Gooch, 245 Md. 160, 225 A.2d 431(1967); Mize v. Beauchamp Associates, 245 Md. 583, 227 A.2d 5(1967). In the cases we have surveyed, it seems that the Court did not have occasion to address directly the nature of an injury per se. They focus, in the main, on whether an injury was "accidental" rather than on its composition. So in Schemmel, 164 Md. at 680, 166 A. 39, the Court spoke of an "accident" but it did so in terms of "any mischance resulting in physical injury to the bodily tissues. . . ."
Geipe, 172 Md. at 171, 190 A. 836, was more informative. The Court observed that an "accidental personal injury " within the scope and meaning of the statute need not be caused by physical impact or direct injury to the body. Such an injury may be
a nervous shock that produces not a mere emotional impulse but a physiological injury as the proximate effect of an unforeseen or unexpected event. . . .
Id.
In Jackson, 173 Md. at 403, 196 A. 107, the Court stated:
Such an injury as the statute contemplates means any fortuitous, casual, and unexpected happening which causes personal disability or death. . . .
{PA}
Page 721} Daniels, 199 Md. at 159, 85 A.2d 795, indicated that an injury is accidental "even without any external happening of an accidental nature." But physical trauma was present. The Court explained that an accidental injury may be the
sudden and unexpected rupture of some portion of the internal structure of the body, as cerebral hemorrhage or apoplexy, or the
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