Opinion ID: 2069713
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Waskiewicz

Text: As noted, much of the controversy concerning Claim B arises from this Court's decision in Waskiewicz v. General Motors Corp., supra, 342 Md. 699, 679 A.2d 1094, and it is therefore appropriate to begin with that case. In 1973, Mr. Waskiewicz developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both arms as a result of repetitive motion work on a factory assembly line. After undergoing surgery for that condition, he filed a Workers' Compensation claim based on an occupational disease. In an order entered April 21, 1976, the Commission found that Waskiewicz had sustained an occupational disease and suffered both a temporary total and a permanent partial disability; the permanent disability was rated as a 15% loss of use of both hands. Waskiewicz received continuing treatment for his condition, including additional surgeries in 1976, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989. In 1987, as a result of his pain and the aggravation of his carpal tunnel syndrome, GM took him off the assembly line and placed him on light duty, involving no use of power tools or heavy lifting. In 1991, his physician recommended further restrictions on his work duties, including no lifting, no repetitive motion, and no use of air guns. At some point, however, despite that recommendation, GM put Waskiewicz back on the assembly line, and as a result of that, his carpal tunnel syndrome worsened in both hands. In March, 1992, his doctor recommended that he not return to work, and he apparently did not do so. In August, 1992, Waskiewicz filed a new claim for benefits, alleging a disability based on carpal tunnel syndrome beginning March 3, 1992. He did not seek to reopen the 1973 claim. The Commission denied the claim, apparently on the ground that Waskiewicz's condition was not a new occupational disease. Although the Circuit Court, on judicial review, reversed that determination, the Court of Special Appeals effectively reinstated it, concluding that his existing injury was an aggravation of the 1973 disability rather than a new disablement. The only prospect of compensation, it concluded, would be through a reopening of the 1973 claim, but that was barred by § 9-736(b)(3). We took the case to consider whether a new workers' compensation claim, rather than a request for modification of an existing award, can be based on an additional injurious exposure to hazards aggravating the existing disability resulting from occupational disease, and, in a 4-3 decision, answered that question in the negative. Id. at 704, 679 A.2d at 1097. Mr. Waskiewicz looked to the definition of date of disablement in § 9-502(a) as supporting his view that the worsening of any existing disability caused by an additional injurious exposure can support a new claim, and not just the modification of an existing one. The Court rejected that approach, holding instead that disablement, as used in § 9-502, was a singular `event' of becoming partially or totally incapacitated because of an occupational disease, not as a series of exposures to the hazards of the same disease. Id. at 706, 679 A.2d at 1098. Allowing new claims for each exposure after the date of disablement, we said, would render § 9-502(c) meaningless, because one could never pinpoint the compensable event of `disability.'  Id. at 707, 679 A.2d at 1098. Apart from disagreeing with his literal construction of § 9-502, the Court concluded that, if the General Assembly intended the result asserted by Mr. Waskiewicz, it would not have enacted the reopening provisions of § 9-736, giving the Commission broad jurisdiction to modify existing awards, subject to the five-year statute of limitations stated in that section. Citing Stevens v. Rite-Aid Corp., 340 Md. 555, 565 n. 11, 667 A.2d 642, 647 n. 11 (1995), the Court observed that the reopening provision exists for situations in which a claimant's condition degenerates, entitling the claimant to increased benefits, which was essentially Mr. Waskiewicz's situation. We rejected the argument that a new disability arose from the replacement of Mr. Waskiewicz on the assembly line, noting that, had he remained continually in that job, his remedy for the worsened condition would have been a reopening under § 9-736, not a new claim under § 9-502. Building from the premise that a disablement was a singular event, the Court was unwilling to draw any distinction between the situation of a disablement arising from an occupational disease that worsens on its own, by a natural progression of the disease, and one in which the disablement is aggravated by a new exposure, even if, but for the preexisting disablement, a compensable occupational disease could be found to have arisen from that new exposure. In both situations, the Court held, the employee was left to the remedy under § 9-736a reopening of the initial award. Though recognizing some seeming unfairness in the result of that analysis, the Court nonetheless concluded that, for Waskiewicz to prevail, it would have to hold that his removal from the assembly line and later reexposure constituted a new compensable event not recognized in the statute. As noted, Waskiewicz was a 4-3 decision. The dissenters, led by Judge Chasanow, stressed what they regarded as the obvious, not just the seeming, unfairness of limiting a claimant solely to the reopening provision of § 9-736 when, by virtue of the five-year statute of limitations applicable to that remedy, a claim based on new exposures to workplace hazards that did not even arise until after the five-year period had run would nonetheless be barred, and they complained that such a construction, at the very least, ran afoul of the Legislature's mandate that the workers' compensation law be construed liberally in favor of claimants. They expressed the belief that the General Assembly intended to allow workers who suffered a partial disability as the result of an occupational disease to recover for any increased disability resulting not from a natural progression of the disease but from a new exposure to employment hazards. Waskiewicz, supra, 342 Md. at 718, 679 A.2d at 1103-04. More specifically, the dissenters opined that, if the increase in disability occurs within the five-year period allowed under § 9-736, the employee may file for a reopening under that section, but that if there is an additional work-induced increase in the disability that occurs more than five years after the last payment, the worker should be allowed to file a new claim for benefits for the additional disability under § 9-656 or § 9-802. Id. at 718, 679 A.2d at 1104. They viewed those sections as providing for compensation when an employee becomes permanently disabled due partly to a preexisting disease and partly to a subsequent occupational disease, the compensation to be only for the portion of the disability attributable to the occupational disease. Observing that the majority opinion cited no out-of-State cases, Judge Chasanow called attention to Mikitka v. Johns-Manville Products Corp., 139 N.J.Super. 66, 352 A.2d 591 (App.Div.1976), reaching a conclusion contrary to the majority position. Both the Circuit Court and the Court of Special Appeals attempted in this case to avoid the consequences of Waskiewicz, for they would be as harsh to Mr. Schwing as they were to Mr. Waskiewicz. If the holding and reasoning in Waskiewicz are applied here, Schwing, like Waskiewicz, will be barred by limitations from asserting a claim based on new exposures to workplace hazards that did not even arise until long after the period of limitations had run. There are, indeed, some distinctions that can be drawn between this case and Waskiewicz although not those drawn by the two lower courts but, notwithstanding that the case is only two years old, we think it appropriate to take another look at Waskiewicz itself. Our review convinces us that the Court reached the wrong result in that case, and that the true answer lies closer to the position of the dissent. We observe, by way of introduction, that the position taken in Waskiewicz is not only unsupported by any out-of-State case law that we could find but is, in fact, contrary to the position taken in a number of other States. Professor Larson draws a general distinction between complications that develop directly from the original injury, as to which the claimant's remedy lies with the reopening statute and is subject to the limitations period stated therein, and the situation where there is no causal relation between the first injury and the subsequent condition, as to which reopening is obviously not the appropriate remedy. 8 A. Larson, LARSON'S WORKERS' COMPENSATION LAW, § 81.31(b). That certainly would apply where the employee contracts two separate occupational diseases. It has never been suggested, for example, that an employee could not contract two different occupational diseases and be entitled to compensation for both. If an employee suffers a disablement from asbestosis, for example, leading to either a temporary total or a permanent partial disability, but returns to work and then, through repeated exposures at the job site, suffers a disablement from carpal tunnel syndrome, there would seem to be no reason why the employee could not file a new claim for the carpal tunnel syndrome disablement, subject, of course, to any apportionment provisions. The employee's remedy in that situation would ordinarily not be a reopening of the asbestosis case. The notion of a disablement being a singular event thus needs to be viewed in context, and is not absolute. The dissent in Waskiewicz mentioned Mikitka v. Johns-Manville Products Corp., supra, 139 N.J.Super. 66, 352 A.2d 591, as reaching a result contrary to that reached by the majority. In 1967, the employee in that case was awarded a 7 1/2% partial permanent disability for asbestosis. She continued her employment until she retired in 1970. In 1973, she filed a new claim, alleging an increase in her disability resulting from continued exposure after the 1967 award. It was unclear whether her new disability resulted from asbestosis or chronic bronchitis, and no finding was made in that regard. The claim was dismissed on limitations grounds, as not having been filed within two years after her last exposure or one year after she knew or should have known of the nature of her disability and its causal relation to her employment. Before reaching that limitations issue, the New Jersey court made clear that the limitations provision in the reopening statutetwo years after the last payment of compensationwas inapplicable, and therein lies the relevance of the case. The court noted that Mikitka's claim was not one for increased disability stemming from the same exposure as was the basis of the original award but rather was a new claim. Id. 352 A.2d at 593. In the former case, the court observed, the same cause is alleged for the increased incapacity as was alleged for the original injury, whereas in the latter, the claim is for additional disability arising because of exposure to alleged deleterious conditions of employment occurring after entry of the 1967 award.... Id. To apply the reopening provision would have the effect of barring her claim before she even had one, which the court found unreasonable and patently unjust. Id. 352 A.2d at 594. To avoid that result, the court applied, in a somewhat modified form, the limitations statute applicable to new claims. It adopted the view that where an employee has once recovered compensation for an occupational disease and thereafter suffers additional disability from additional exposure to the conditions of employment after rendition of the original award, such an employee can file a claim petition for the disability so caused within [the two-year period of limitations] after the employee knew or ought to have known of the increased disability stemming from the continued employment.... Id. See also Bronico v. J.T. Baker Chemical Co., 209 N.J.Super. 220, 507 A.2d 279, 282 (App.Div. 1986), allowing a second claim for increased noise-induced occupational hearing loss based on exposures following a previous award for such loss: As petitioner's claim was based on continued noise exposure subsequent to his previous award in 1980, it was properly not considered a petition to review or modify the prior award.... Also Calabria v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 4 N.J. 64, 71 A.2d 550 (1950). New Jersey is not alone in this view. Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit have also adopted a similar approach, although, in some instances, in a different context. In Muldoon v. Homestead Insulation Co., 231 Conn. 469, 650 A.2d 1240 (1994), the employee, diagnosed with asbestosis, filed a claim based on his exposure to asbestos during his employment from 1947-1974. In 1977, he settled that claim and received $19,500. He remained in asbestos-related employment thereafter, until 1984, and, in 1987, filed a claim based on a substantial increase in his pulmonary disability arising from the post-1974 exposures. The commissioner found as a fact that the increased disability was due substantially to the recent exposures, rather than a natural progression of the original disease. Allowing the claim as a new claim, the Connecticut Supreme Court concluded that [t]o deprive a worker, such as Muldoon, of coverage for new injuries from subsequent exposures to asbestos would violate public policy and contravene the purpose of the act, which is to be liberally construed to provide coverage for employees who are injured on the job. Id. 650 A.2d at 1246. Compare Duni v. United Technologies Corp./Pratt, 239 Conn. 19, 682 A.2d 99 (1996), confirming but distinguishing Muldoon. In Ford v. State Workmen's Compensation Com'r., 160 W.Va. 629, 236 S.E.2d 234 (1977), two claimants each received a 15% permanent partial disability award for occupational pneumoconiosis, continued working, and, based on additional exposures occurring after the initial award, filed new claims. Under West Virginia law, occupational pneumoconiosis constituted an injury. On that basis, the court held that subsequent exposures constituted new injuries and that the claimants were not limited to reopening the previous claims. The reopening provision, it concluded, provided an additional rather than an exclusive method of adjusting prior claims. Id. 236 S.E.2d at 235. See also White v. SWCC, 164 W.Va. 284, 262 S.E.2d 752 (1980); Anderson v. State Workers' Compensation Com'r, 174 W.Va. 406, 327 S.E.2d 385 (1985); Smith v. Workers' Compensation Com'r, 179 W.Va. 782, 373 S.E.2d 495 (1988). The Pennsylvania courts have also examined the nature of a claim for an occupational disability aggravated by repeated exposure. In Mancini's Bakery v. W.C.A.B. (Leone), 155 Pa.Cmwlth. 641, 625 A.2d 1308 (1993), the employee began experiencing pain in his knee in 1982 and in 1983 was diagnosed as having advanced degenerative osteoarthritic disease. He continued to work until 1990. In October, 1988, the disease was confirmed and he eventually underwent surgery. He filed his claim in November, 1988, asserting that the injury was work-related and that it occurred in October, 1988. Positing that the claimant knew of his injury in 1983, the employer argued that the claim was not filed within three years after the injury and that notice was not given within 120 days of the injury, both as required by Pennsylvania law. The court rejected that argument and concluded instead that [e]ach day that Claimant worked constituted a `new' injury in that it aggravated his condition. Id. 625 A.2d at 1311. See also USAir, Inc. v. W.C.A.B. (Schwarz), 160 Pa.Cmwlth. 100, 634 A.2d 714 (1993). In General Elec. Co. v. Industrial Commission, 89 Ill.2d 432, 60 Ill.Dec. 629, 433 N.E.2d 671 (1982), the employee, while working for another employer, developed carpal tunnel syndrome. She underwent surgery and received a compensation award. Ten years later, while working for General Electric, she suffered a recurrence of the carpal tunnel syndrome. The evidence established that her new condition was not simply a natural recurrence of her old problem, but the result of a new, work-related injury. Id., 60 Ill.Dec. 629, 433 N.E.2d at 672. Illinois law at the time treated the claimant's weakened wrist condition, even when resulting from a series of repetitive job-related stresses, as an accidental injury, and the court allowed the claim for the new injury. Finally, in Cadwallader v. Sholl, 196 F.2d 14 (D.C.Cir.1952), a case arising under the Longshoremen's and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, the employee, a baker, was disabled by dermatitis from July, 1944, to October, 1946. The dermatitis was caused by her contact with flour, and she received a compensation award. In 1947, she filed another claim, based on a recurrence of the dermatitis from and after December, 1946. The issue was whether the second claim was barred by a one-year statute of limitations, which depended on whether a new claim could be filed for the recurrence of the occupational disease. A majority of the court held that it couldthat as a matter of law the recurrence constituted an injury within the meaning of the statute. Although Judge Prettyman, in dissent, disagreed that all recurrences constitute an injury and thus objected to the sweeping construction of the term injury, he agreed that a recurrence arising from new contact with the cause of the disease would constitute a compensable injury. His only disagreement was including as a new injury a reappearance of the disease even though the person has had no further contact with the original or any other recognized cause. Id. at 16. There is nothing directly in the Maryland workers' compensation law that compels the result reached in Waskiewicz. The Court focused in that case on the definition of disablement in § 9-502(a), and, in particular, on the statement that disablement meant the event of a covered employee becoming partially or totally incapacitated. That statement led the Court to its notion of disablement, and with it the right to file a claim for compensation, as a singular event, a defining moment that can occur only once. It was concerned that allowing new claims for subsequent exposures after that event would render § 9-502(c), establishing the employer's liability, meaningless because one could never pinpoint the compensable event of `disability.' On further reflection, we think that focus was too narrow. The definition of disablement in § 9-502(a) must be read in conjunction with the definition of occupational disease in § 9-101(g). Prior to the enactment of the Labor and Employment Article, both definitions appeared in the same section of the CodeArticle 101, § 67. Occupational disease was defined as the event of an employee's becoming actually incapacitated, either temporarily, partially or totally, because of a disease contracted as the result of and in the course of employment .... § 67(13) (emphasis added). Disablement was defined as the event of an employee's becoming actually incapacitated, either partly or totally, because of an occupational disease, from performing his work in the last occupation in which exposed to the hazards of such disease .... § 67(15) (emphasis added). Section 67(15) also defined disability as the state of being so incapacitated. The definitions of occupational disease and disablement were parallel, and both hinged on an event. When the Labor and Employment Article was enacted, as part of the code revision process, the word event was deliberately deleted from the definition of occupational disease. The Revisor's Note to § 9-101(g) points out that [i]n the introductory language of this subsection, the former word `event' is deleted as potentially misleading since a disease normally is not characterized as an `event.' (Emphasis added.) For whatever reason, a similar change was not made to the definition of disablement, which, as noted, was removed from the general definition section and placed in § 9-502. The legislature did, however, delete the definition of disability as formerly contained in § 67(15). These changes, at the very least, create some ambiguity as to the legislative intent. In redefining occupational disease, the General Assembly seemingly acquiesced in the view that incapacity arising from an occupational disease is not triggered by an event. The term disablement, which retains the notion of an event, does not even appear in § 9-502(c)the subsection that establishes the employer's liability for compensation in occupational disease cases. Subsection 9-502(c) requires compensation for disabilitya term that previously was defined in conjunction with disablement, but which was deleted. Disablement appears only in § 9-502(d), which, as noted earlier, focuses on the connection between the occupational disease and the employment, rather than on the employee's physical condition or incapacity. To highlight the word event, appearing only in the definition of disablementa definition of limited scopeand give it paramount significance is unwarranted. We find nothing to suggest that, by retaining the notion of an event in the definition of disablement, after having deliberately deleted that notion from the definition of occupational disease, the Legislature intended to preclude a covered employee, who suffers a disability from an occupational disease tied to his or her employment, from recovering compensation for a subsequent disability caused by a subsequent exposure. Indeed, there is evidence of a contrary intent. Since 1968, employees disabled by a compensable occupational disease, along with employees disabled as the result of a compensable accidental injury, have been eligible for vocational rehabilitation services designed to assist them in returning to gainful employment. Consistent with that approach, employees disabled by an occupational disease have been included, equally with employees disabled through accidental injury, in the Subsequent Injury Fund program. Section 9-802 expressly provides for compensation to employees with an existing permanent impairment who suffer a subsequent occupational disease that results in a greater permanent disability than would have resulted from the subsequent occupational disease alone, and apportions liability for that greater impairment between the employer and the Fund. The avowed purpose of these programs is to rehabilitate disabled workers and encourage employers to hire them. See also § 9-608, providing for apportioned benefits when an occupational disease aggravates a non-compensable disability. It strikes us as inconsistent with both the rehabilitation program and the entitlement to compensation for an increased disability arising from occupational disease contracted on the job to apply a singular event theory to foreclose compensation when the once-injured employee is, indeed, rehabilitated, and suffers a recurrence of the disability due to new work-related exposures. The Waskiewicz approach may serve a narrow interest of some employers, but, as pointed out in a casenote review by M. Hourigan in 56 MD. LAW REV. 1019, 1043 (1997), the decision is at odds with public policy in a number of respects. It certainly does not comport with the legislative and judicial direction that the Workers' Compensation Act be construed liberally in favor of injured employees, to effect its benevolent purposes. § 9-102; Howard Co. Ass'n, Retard. Cit. v. Walls, 288 Md. 526, 530, 418 A.2d 1210, 1213 (1980); R & T Construction v. Judge, 323 Md. 514, 529, 594 A.2d 99, 107 (1991). It creates unnecessary distinctions between employees whose work-related disability is exacerbated by a subsequent accidental injury and those whose disability is exacerbated by subsequent work-related exposures. As Mr. Hourigan notes, [p]otentially, the court's holding may deter employees exposed to occupational disease from filing initial claims for partial disability for fear that any attempt to recover for later exposure and increased disability will be barred. 56 MD. L.REV. at 1041. This could be a particular problem if the employee anticipates returning to his or her same (or similar) job. Most significantly, as the Waskiewicz case itself dramatically illustrates, the law should not create incentives for employers to abuse their employees by exposing them to additional occupational hazards after the limitations period has expired. Id. at 142. Finally, we question whether the approach taken in Mikitka and the other cases discussed above would render § 9-502(c) or § 9-736 meaningless, as suggested in Waskiewicz. A fair and clear distinction can be drawn, and hereby is drawn, between the worsening or aggravation of a disability due to a natural progression of the disease or to some other non-compensable cause and an aggravation or recurrence of the disability due to subsequent injurious exposures on the job. In the former case, the employee is left to his or her rights under § 9-736, to reopen the earlier claim, subject to the five-year period of limitations applicable to that section. In the latter case, the claim is a new one under § 9-502, based upon a new disability arising from the new injurious exposure, and the applicable period of limitations is that stated in § 9-711, commenced by the new disablement or the employee's actual knowledge that that disablement was caused by the employment. Except to the extent that an aggravation or recurrence may be due partly to a natural progression of the disease and partly to new exposures, in which event a partial remedy may lie under both § 9-502 and § 9-736, we hold that the two remedies are mutually exclusive and not cumulative. As indicated, an application under § 9-736 is reserved for an aggravation attributable to the disability already adjudicated, for which compensation was paid. A new claim under § 9-502, if based on the same occupational disease, is limited to an aggravation or recurrence resulting from new exposures. Although, when the evidence could lead to different conclusions in this regard, an employee might properly seek relief alternatively under both sections, subject to the applicable statutes of limitations, any relief must be founded upon one or the other, depending on the findings made by the Commission or a reviewing court. Relief may not be had under one section merely because it is not affordable under the other, however. The evidence must demonstrate that the aggravation or recurrence arises from a new disablement to fall within § 9-502; to the extent that it does, relief is not affordable under § 9-736, and vice versa. As Waskiewicz is inconsistent with these conclusions, it is overruled.