Opinion ID: 2967897
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 2d 1067 (Md. 1991).

Text: The Maryland courts have not, contrary to Judge Niemeyer’s asser- tion, historically restricted liability to acts authorized by the employer or performed by the employer’s alter ego. Ante at 29 (Opinion of Niemeyer, J.). In fact, when the Maryland Court of GANTT v. SECURITY, USA, INC. 25 Appeals considered the question over a decade ago, it did not merely cast doubt on the alter ego approach. It expressly declined to read the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Act to require a showing that the employee was the alter ego of the employer, rejecting the approach taken in Schatz v. York Steak House Sys., Inc., 444 A.2d 1045 (Md. App. 1982) and Cont’l Cas. Co. v. Mirabile, 449 A.2d 1176 (Md. App. 1982). See Le, 595 A.2d at 1074 (holding that the ‘intent to injure’ exception to the general exclusivity of the workers’ compensation act does not embody[ ] the particular restriction upheld . . . in Mirabile and Schatz). Moreover, the Le court made clear that the act in question need not be taken by an employee with the express authorizat[ion] of the employer itself before it could be imputed to that employer. Id. Finally, while Le did state that, it may well be that the General Assembly, by the language ‘deliberate intention of his employer to produce such injury,’ intended something less than the full sweep of common law respondeat superior liability, id., there is nothing in the Maryland case law to suggest that the legislature intended to protect an employer from suit where, as here, its supervisor acted, as a supervisor, in the normal course of her employment, with the deliberate intent to injure another employee — simply because that supervisor’s action violated the order of an absent, higher-ranking company official. Cf. Hastings v. Mechalske, 650 A.2d 274, 281 (Md. 1994) (holding that, the employer remains liable with respect to the duty, regardless of the acts or omissions of the person entrusted to perform it). Nor would such a rule be wise. Whether or not there were other people above Claggett in the Security, USA hierarchy, there is no question that, on the morning of Gantt’s abduction, Claggett was the supervisor in charge of the New Carrolton building for Security, USA. As an employee of Security, USA, Gantt had no choice but to abide Claggett’s orders; there were, after all, no higher-ranking authorities present to whom Gantt could appeal. That Claggett’s order represented the order of her employer is the only reason that Gantt remained outside at post 9, in fear for her life. Moreover, were we to hold that a supervisor’s actions could not be imputed to an employer whenever the employer had a standing policy against the action taken by a supervisor, it would render the ‘intent to injure’ exception to exclusivity set forth in section 509(d) a near 26 GANTT v. SECURITY, USA, INC. nullity, relevant only to those rare occasions when an employer did not have a policy of some sort forbidding actions taken with a deliberate intent to kill or injure another employee. Without any guidance in the statutory text or the caselaw, I would never so restrictively interpret this provision.