Opinion ID: 2318562
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Comprehensiveness of the Administrative Adjudication Remedy

Text: The Insurance Article is composed of nearly thirty diverse titles, ranging from Health Insurance to the Slavery Era Insurance Policy Reporting. There are a vast amount of provisions, spread over multiple titles, that apply just to title insurers, like Huntington. No doubt the General Assembly created a comprehensive, if not complex, regulatory and remedial scheme (though, some may find the word labyrinthine a fairer description). See Zappone, 349 Md. at 64, 706 A.2d at 1070 (A very comprehensive administrative remedial scheme is some indication that the Legislature intended the administrative remedy to be primary....). The question, however, is whether that scheme is sufficiently comprehensive, such that the Legislature displayed an intent for claims, like Carter's (which allege violation of Title 27) to proceed first through the MIA. In Zappone, we discussed the regulatory and remedial provisions of [Title 27]. Zappone, 349 Md. at 67, 706 A.2d at 1071. Although we described them as somewhat comprehensive, we found that they were not so all-encompassing as to preclude resort to a fully independent common law remedy.... Id. (emphasis added). As explained above, we saw § 27-103(e) as an escape valve for some claimants, who, under an all-inclusive and comprehensive statutory scheme, otherwise may have to forsake or abate their common law claims and pursue relief through the statute. Thus, in Zappone, we considered whether the comprehensiveness of the administrative remedy forced a consumer with a recognized independent tort remedy into an administrative adjudication, via application of the doctrine of primary jurisdiction. See Zappone, 349 Md. at 50, 706 A.2d at 1062-63. In the present case, however, the question is quite distinctwhether the comprehensiveness of the statute allows a consumer, with a claimed statutory violation, to pursue directly a judicial remedy in a court of law merely by characterizing or recasting the regulatory violation as a common law claim. As elucidated further infra, we find that the Legislature evinced an intentin the sophistication of the framework of prohibited acts and remedial salves that is the Insurance Article (and in the other Zappone factors)that claims dependent on the Article, in that they allege and depend on a statutory benchmark violation, should be considered first by the administering agency. Thus, while the Insurance Article may suggest that the administrative remedy is merely concurrent for truly and fully independent common law claims, it suggests a primary jurisdictional grant for claims alleging what amounts to purely statutory violations. The does not relieve language in § 27-103(e) does not compel a different conclusion. In the current context, it puts violators on notice that he/she/it may be responsible for additional sanctions, despite the receipt of a cease and desist order. By implication, it recognizes also that there may be proceedings leading up to those additional sanctions. It does not resolve, however, whether the proceedings, in the first instance, should be administrative or judicial in nature, depending on the nature of the claim as explicated in a complaint. [12]