 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Darden v. Mass Transit Administration5/4/2005
In the context of Workers' Compensation law, a subsequent injury on the heels of a prior partial disability sometimes creates the arithmetic anomaly of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. In this appeal, that anomaly poses the question of whether the subsequent employer, in such a case, is responsible for the whole or only for a particular part. Is the responsibility of the employer in any way altered, moreover, if the subsequent employer happens to have been, coincidentally, the earlier employer as well? To the problem of who picks up the tab for the difference when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, Maryland responded 1) by creating, in 1963, the Subsequent Injury Fund; and 2) by forging, in the intervening 42 years, an entire body of implementing jurisprudence.
Our most daunting challenge will be to unravel, almost surgically, two discrete strands of litigation that became hopelessly intertwined. Two work-related injuries occurred, over four years apart. They could have been litigated four years apart. Seeds of confusion were sown, however, when the respective claims 1) were simultaneously heard and decided by the Workers' Compensation Commission, 2) were simultaneously appealed to the circuit court, 3) were simultaneously remanded to the Commission, 4) were simultaneously appealed to the circuit court for a second time, and 5) are now simultaneously appealed to us. Compounding the confusion is the coincidental fact that the employer at the time of the subsequent injury also happened to have been the employer at the time of the earlier injury. Under the circumstances, a fusion amounting to symbiosis was inevitable.
Our challenge will be to sort out discrete juridical events and then to make every effort to see that our analysis of one does not leak into the analysis of the other. If the two compensation claims had been litigated sequentially instead of simultaneously, this case would have been delightfully simple. Our goal will be to assess the two claims as if they had been litigated sequentially.
Two Sequential Injuries
It behooves us to establish, first, a proper calendar of relevant events. What matters in that regard is the chronology of the injuries, not the chronology of the litigation of the injury claims. At all times pertinent to this case, the appellant, Percy W. Darden, was employed by the appellee, Mass Transit Administration ("MTA"), as a heavy rail operator. In both 1994 and 1998, Darden suffered work-related injuries. On both occasions he filed claims with the Workers' Compensation Commission and on both occasions the Commission made awards in his favor. There is no dispute with respect to the merits of Darden's claims for compensation. The only dispute concerns the proper method for calculating the total compensation ultimately due him.
The first injury occurred on January 18, 1994, when Darden slipped on the ice and fell on the right side of his body at the Wabash Avenue rail yard in Baltimore. He suffered multiple injuries and, as a result of those injuries, underwent 1) bilateral carpal tunnel surgery, 2) right trigger thumb surgery, and 3) right rotator cuff surgery. Darden filed a claim, No. B307805, with the Commission on what appears to have been March 7, 1994.
The second work-related injury occurred four years later, on July 9, 1998, when Darden suffered an injury to his left knee while climbing into a subway train cab in order to re-qualify as a train operator after his right shoulder surgery. As a result of that later injury, he underwent left knee surgery. For that accident in 1998, Darden filed a claim, No. 481077, with the Commission, apparently on November 24, 1999.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Maryland Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
By using the system, you agree to TERMS OF SERVICE
|