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Kelly v. Baltimore County1/31/2005
nder by a preponderance of the evidence. Additionally, the jury will be informed that the decision of the Commission is presumed to be correct, and that the employer has the burden of overcoming that presumption. Id. at 367-68.
In the instant case, Kelly, the claimant, received a decision in his favor from the Commission, awarding him benefits for the back injury that he claimed he sustained from his employment-related motor vehicle accident. The Commission specifically found that "the accidental injury sustained on October 24, 2002 exacerbated [Kelly's] pre-existing condition requiring the need for back surgery." When the County elected to seek judicial review of the Commission's decision by way of an essential de novo proceeding, the allocation of the burdens switched. At the circuit court level, the County was required to produce a prima facie case establishing that there was no causal connection between the employment-related accident and the need for Kelly to undergo back surgery. The County also bore the burden of persuading the jury by a preponderance of the evidence that the accident was not causally related to the surgery.
This case took a procedural turn, however, when the County decided to file its motion for summary judgment in an effort to circumvent a jury trial. In its motion, the County argued that Kelly's claim involves "complex medical questions which require a doctor to relate the surgery and treatment to a reasonable degree of medical certainty to the date of accident. No doctor has done so." The County argued that because Kelly suffered from a pre-existing condition, the question of whether the employment-related accident exacerbated his condition, causing him to need surgery, was a complicated medical question which required "a physician's expert opinion to a degree of medical certainty." The County argued that, because Kelly did not introduce such evidence during the Commission hearing, "the Claimant failed to meet his burden of proof as a matter of law." The circuit court granted the County's motion for summary judgment "as a matter of law," without any further elaboration.
In General Motors Corp. and S.B. Thomas, this Court affirmatively stated: " he decision of the Commission is, ipso facto, the claimant's prima facie case and the claimant runs no risk of suffering a directed verdict from the insufficiency of his evidence before the circuit court." S.B. Thomas, 114 Md. App. at 367; General Motors, 79 Md. App. at 80. It follows that the risk of an adverse summary judgment is also minimal, although, as we shall explain, not non-existent. We need not attempt to address all possible permutations of situations that may arise in the future if an employer who has requested essential de novo review of an adverse ruling from the Commission files a motion for summary judgment in the circuit court. We need only decide whether the circuit court correctly granted the County's motion in this case on the record before us. We conclude that when the appealing employer files a motion for summary judgment asserting an argument that requires a resolution of an issue of fact, and the underlying facts are susceptible of more than one permissible inference, because the claimant enjoys the presumption of correctness of the Commission's decision, summary judgment is not appropriate.
Summary Judgment and Workers' Compensation Appeals
Prior to an amendment that became effective July 1, 2004, Maryland Rule 2-501(a) stated: "Any party may file at any time a motion for summary judgment on all or part of an action on the ground that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Several cases
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