Opinion ID: 1907135
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Construction of Section 9-610(a)

Text: As we have indicated, the crux of the substantive issue before us arises from the fact that, in rewriting Article 101, § 33(d), as § 9-610(a) of the Labor and Employment Article, the General Assembly deleted the word similar, as it had appeared in § 33(d). The question is whether, in doing so, it intended to make a substantive change in the law. The answer to that question is not evident merely from the text of § 9-610, so we need to look for the legislative intent in a broader context, and that requires, in this case, an examination of the legislative history of the set-off provision. Local government employees have been dealt with specially since the first enactment of the workers' compensation law in 1914. The original Act, 1914 Md. Laws, ch. 800, required employers who employed workmen in extra-hazardous employments to provide the compensation provided for by the Act. Section 34 of the Act provided that, whenever the State or a county or municipality engaged in extra-hazardous work in which workmen were employed for wages, the Act was applicable thereto. It went on to state, however, that whenever, and so long as, by State law, city charter, or municipal ordinance, a provision equal or better than that given under the terms of this Act is made for municipal employees injured in the course of employment such employee shall not be entitled to the benefits of this Act. Nothing was said in the Act about similar benefits. Although the scope of the section was expanded from time to time to add new categories of governmental, or quasi-governmental, employees ( see Clauss v. Board of Education, 181 Md. 513, 30 A.2d 779 (1943)), the formulation set forth in the 1914 law remained intact until 1970, when, as part of a bill deleting the requirement that employment be extra-hazardous to be covered, the entire provision dealing with non-military State and local government personnel was repealed. See 1970 Md. Laws, ch. 741. The reason for the repeal is not entirely clear. Chief Judge Orth, in Nooe v. City of Baltimore, 28 Md.App. 348, 350, 345 A.2d 134 (1975), cert. denied, 276 Md. 748 (1976), suggested that it may have been a delayed reaction to this Court's ruling in Montgomery County v. Kaponin, 237 Md. 112, 205 A.2d 292 (1964). [4] Kaponin involved a county police officer who, as the result of a job-related injury, suffered a 75% permanent partial disability. He retired and, pursuant to the county pension plan, began receiving disability benefits of $260/month. Thereafter, the officer filed for workers' compensation benefits and received an award of $25/week, which, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, was less than the retirement benefit. The county sought judicial review, arguing that, by virtue of § 33, it was not liable. This Court viewed § 33 not as an offset provision, however, but as a qualification statute designed to give municipal employers an alternative to providing workmen's compensation by enacting legislation affording to their employees benefits equal to or greater than those provided by the Workmen's Compensation Law. Id. at 115, 205 A.2d at 294. The comparison, we said, was not to be on a case-by-case, dollar-for-dollar, basis, but rather on a law-by-law basis. The county pension plan at issue, while affording Officer Kaponin a higher weekly benefit, did not provide medical benefits or partial or permanent partial benefits, which were afforded under the workers' compensation law. Id. Accordingly, we viewed the provisions of the county pension law as not being equal to or greater than the provisions of the Workers' Compensation Act and held that the officer could collect under both laws. As Judge Orth noted in Nooe, the manifest purpose of § 33 was to a large extent circumvented by the Kaponin holding. Nooe, supra, 28 Md.App. at 352, 345 A.2d at 137. It is questionable whether many, or any, local pension plans could satisfy the comparability standard imposed by Kaponin; pension planseven disability retirement plansdo not ordinarily provide medical benefits. Whatever may have been the legislative purpose in repealing § 33 in 1970, the section was restored, in a different format, the next year, as an emergency measure. 1971 Md. Laws, ch. 785. In an obvious attempt to overcome the Kaponin standard, the law was rewritten as a dollar-for-dollar set-off provision. In what eventually became § 33(d) of Article 101, the 1971 statute stated that whenever, as part of a pension system or otherwise,  any benefit or benefits were furnished to governmental employees,  the benefit or benefits when furnished by the employer shall satisfy and discharge the employer's obligation for compensation benefits, but that, if the other benefit was less than the compensation benefit, the employer shall be liable to furnish the additional benefit as will make up the difference between the benefit furnished and the similar benefit required in this Article. (Emphasis added.) The 1971 Act added as well a provision authorizing the Commission to determine whether  any benefit provided by the employer was equal to or better than the workers' compensation benefit and to render an award against the employer to furnish additional benefits to make up the difference between the benefit furnished by the employer and the compensation benefit. It is not entirely clear from the face of the 1971 enactment what the Legislature had in mind when it inserted the limiting word similar only near the end of the section, in the provision dealing with the situation where the alternative benefit is less than the compensation benefit, and omitted it elsewherein the general set-off provision and in the provision authorizing the Commission to determine whether the alternative benefit is, in fact, equal to or better than the compensation benefit. The title to the Act never mentions the limitation. [5] In 1976, the Legislature rewrote the part of § 33 dealing with military personnel, adding a provision similar to the 1971 law relating to local governmental employeesthat, if any benefits provided by the Federal Government were less than those provided under the workers' compensation law, the State should furnish the additional benefit in order to make up the difference between the benefit provided by the Federal Government and the similar benefit required by this article. 1976 Md. Laws, ch. 762 (emphasis added). With that addition, the word similar appeared in two places in § 33in § 33(a), dealing with the organized militia and in § 33(d) dealing with local governmental employees. The initial cases arising under the 1971 law dealt with situations in which the alternative benefit that the county sought to set off was, in fact, a disability retirement benefit, and the issue of similarity did not arise. In Mazor v. State, Dep't of Correction, supra, 279 Md. 355, 369 A.2d 82, for example, where we considered a variety of challenges to § 33(d)then codified as § 33(c)a prison guard who, as the result of being stabbed by an inmate, was rendered totally and permanently incapacitated for duty, was awarded an accidental disability pension by the State equivalent to $5,059/year. Subsequently, he filed a claim for workers' compensation benefits, was found by the Commission to have sustained a permanent 60% disability as a result of the incident, and was awarded compensation benefits amounting to $3,380/year. On judicial review, the circuit court concluded that the State could set off the disability pension benefit and therefore was discharged from its liability for the workers' compensation benefit, a determination we affirmed. We looked at both workers' compensation benefits and the disability pension received by Mazor as facets of an overall system of wage-loss protection, an underlying principle of which is to restore to the worker a portion of wages lost by physical disability, unemployment, or old age. Id. at 363, 369 A.2d at 88. Although two or more causes of wage loss may coincide, the benefits need not cumulate, we held, for the worker experiences but one wage loss. Rejecting Mazor's Constitutional challenges to the offset provision, we concluded that the General Assembly could rationally have determined that since an employee suffers only one wage loss, he should receive the equivalent of only one disability benefit. Id. at 365, 369 A.2d at 89. See also Feissner v. Prince George's Co., 282 Md. 413, 384 A.2d 742 (1978); Frank v. Baltimore County, supra, 284 Md. 655, 399 A.2d 250; Nooe v. City of Baltimore, supra, 28 Md.App. 348, 345 A.2d 134. In Frank, without any particular reference to the word similar, we noted that [u]pon reading section 33, the scheme that unmistakably emerges is that the General Assembly wished to provide only a single recovery for a single injury for governmental employees covered by both a pension plan and workmen's compensation. Frank, supra, 284 Md. at 659, 399 A.2d at 253 (emphasis added). We observed that Lt. Frank's view, that benefits paid under a contributory disability plan did not qualify for set-off, would frustrate the legislature's intention to minimize the burden on the public treasury that would result from providing duplicate benefits to public employees. Id. at 661, 399 A.2d at 254 (emphasis added). In Oros v. City of Baltimore, 56 Md.App. 685, 468 A.2d 693 (1983), the Court of Special Appeals had before it three police officers who had suffered job-related injuries and, pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement, were paid full sick leave salary by the City. Those salary-continuation payments served as a full set-off against the awards of temporary total disability. When the officers, having reached maximum recovery, filed claims for permanent partial benefits, the City, noting that the compensation benefit for temporary total disability was only two-thirds of salary, attempted to set off the additional one-third that it paid during that period against the permanent partial disability benefits. Focusing on the requirement of similarity, the Court of Special Appeals rejected that attempt. It read Frank and Mazor as recognizing that the legislative intent behind § 33(c) was to preclude double-dipping into the same pot of comparable benefits, id. at 694, 468 A.2d at 697, and concluded that sick leave benefits, which were in the nature of wage-loss protection, were not comparable to permanent partial disability benefits, which compensated not for wage loss but for loss of earning capacity. We affirmed, but on a different ground, holding that benefits sufficient to offset one kind of workers' compensation benefit, such as temporary total disability, may not be used to offset another, distinct, compensation benefit, such as for permanent disability. City of Baltimore v. Oros, 301 Md. 460, 483 A.2d 748 (1984). Baltimore County's argument in the Wills case stems principally from Newman v. Subsequent Injury Fund, supra, 311 Md. 721, 537 A.2d 274. There, for the first time, we were confronted with a county employee who suffered a work-related injury, who received an award of permanent partial disability benefits, and who retired on ordinary service-related retirement. The retirement benefits were less than the compensation benefits, and, a year-and-a-half after her retirement, the county sought to set off the retirement amounts against the compensation benefits. The county won in the lower courts, but we reversed. Notwithstanding that the word similar appeared only near the end of § 33(d), we held that it also qualifie[d] the provision at the beginning of the section as to the benefits furnished employees by employers. Id. at 724, 537 A.2d at 275. Thus, we said, [i]t follows that for the setoff to come into play, the two benefits must be `similar.' Id. We concluded that payment of service-based retirement benefits had no relation whatsoever to her injury and the disability resulting therefrom and that the two benefits were therefore not similar and not comparable. That holding, we noted, was consistent with the view taken in earlier cases that the intent behind § 33(d) was to provide a single recovery for a single injury. The cases allowing set-offs, we said, were decided in the context of dual benefits accruing by reason of the same injury, that is, two benefits being paid stemming from the same cause. Id. at 727, 537 A.2d at 277. Three years after Newman was decided, the General Assembly enacted the Labor and Employment Article as part of the ongoing code revision process. This was a bulk revision of all of the laws relating to labor and employmentnot only the workers' compensation law, but the laws relating to the Division of Labor and Industry, collective bargaining, occupational safety and health, farm labor, and unemployment compensation as well. The code revision process, ongoing since 1971, was authorized by statute §§ 2-1315 through 2-1318 of the State Government Article. [6] Section 2-1316 created the position of Revisor of Statutes, to be appointed by the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Delegates, and § 2-1317 directed that person, among other things, to make recommendations for the reclassification, rearrangement, renumbering, rewording, and other formal revision of the public general laws in the Code. We have long recognized and applied the principle that a change in a statute as part of a general recodification will ordinarily not be deemed to modify the law unless the change is such that the intention of the Legislature to modify the law is unmistakable.  Duffy v. Conaway, 295 Md. 242, 257, 455 A.2d 955 (1983) (emphasis added); In re Special Investigation No. 236, 295 Md. 573, 458 A.2d 75 (1983). That is because the principal function of code revision is to reorganize the statutes and state them in simpler form, and thus changes are presumed to be for the purpose of clarity rather than for a change in meaning. Bureau of Mines v. George's Creek, 272 Md. 143, 155, 321 A.2d 748, 754 (1974), quoting from Welsh v. Kuntz, 196 Md. 86, 97, 75 A.2d 343, 347 (1950). That principle of statutory construction is particularly appropriate to apply in this case. As the county correctly points out, we must presume that the General Assembly was aware of our decision in Newman when it enacted the 1991 law. It is one of the useful fictions of the law that the Legislature is presumed to be aware of the interpretation that this Court has placed upon its enactments. Waddell v. Kirkpatrick, 331 Md. 52, 60, 626 A.2d 353, 357 (1993). It would therefore have been aware, if that fiction is indulged, that the only benefits that a county was entitled to set off against a workers' compensation award were those that were similar to the compensation benefitsthose which, if not set off, would permit a double recovery for the same injury. Given the principle that, ordinarily, an intent to make a substantive change in the law is not implied from language changes made through code revision, we look to see if there is some evidence, other than the mere dropping of the word similar in one of the two places it appeared in § 33, that the Legislature intended, through the vehicle of the Code Revision Bill, to make such a drastic substantive change, one that, for the first time since at least 1971, and possibly since 1914, would have barred local government employees who received service-based, non-disability, retirement benefits from collecting workers' compensation. None has been cited to us, nor have we found any. Indeed, the evidence is to the contrary. In conformance with code revision practice, the Department of Legislative Reference prepared a Report for the General Assembly, to accompany the Code Revision Bill (1991 House Bill 1). That Report made clear that the proposed Article was a code revision product. It noted: The basic thrust of the revision is formal; the primary purposes of the work are modernization and clarification, not policymaking. Nonetheless, a revision sometimes must touch on the substance of the law. Every effort is made to ensure that a proposed revision conforms as nearly as possible to the intent of the General Assembly, and all these revisions are highlighted in the appropriate revisor's notes. In other instances, the staff has used revisor's notes to call to the attention of the General Assembly fundamental policy issues that are beyond the purview of the revision process but has made no attempt to resolve the policy problems.  (Emphasis added.) The revision of § 33, as noted, deleted the word similar from the provision dealing with local government employees, but it did not delete the word from the analogous provision dealing with military personnel. See § 9-610(b)(2). The Revisor's Note to § 9-610 says nothing about the deletion and nothing about an intent to distinguish between military and local government personnel. Indeed, it makes clear that no substantive change was intended, stating, in relevant part: This section is new language derived without substantive change from former Art. 101, § 33(e), the second and third sentences of (a), the first, second ... and third sentence of (d). (Emphasis added.) Revisor's Notes, though not part of the statute, are entitled to considerable weight in ascertaining legislative intent. Dean v. Pinder, 312 Md. 154, 163, 538 A.2d 1184, 1189 (1988); Office & Prof. Employees Int'l v. MTA, 295 Md. 88, 101, 453 A.2d 1191 (1982); Allers v. Tittsworth, 269 Md. 677, 683, 309 A.2d 476, 480 (1973). In light of the Report, it is significant that the General Assembly made no change at all to the several hundred page bill, but enacted it, without amendment, as introduced. Substantive changes to the laws included in the code revision bill were made at the same session by other enactments, [7] but the Legislature implicitly accepted House Bill 1 as represented, as making no substantive change in the law not specifically noted in a revisor's note. On this record, it is evident that the General Assembly did not intend to make any substantive change to the law in deleting the word similar. There is simply no basis for a conclusion that, despite the Revisor's Note and the Report, the Legislature, sub silentio, desired to deprive local government employees of a benefit they had so long enjoyed. The Court of Special Appeals erred in deciding otherwise. The test for set off under § 9-610 is the same as it was under § 33, and, under that test, the county is not entitled to set off Ms. Wills's retirement benefits against her workers' compensation benefits. JUDGMENT OF COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS IN BLEVINS AND WILLS REVERSED; CASES REMANDED TO THAT COURT WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO REVERSE JUDGMENTS OF CIRCUIT COURT FOR BALTIMORE COUNTY; AND REMAND THE CASES TO THAT COURT WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO AFFIRM THE DECISIONS OF THE WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION; COSTS IN THIS COURT AND COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS TO BE PAID BY BALTIMORE COUNTY.