Opinion ID: 540771
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Legal

Text: 8 In 1928 Congress, acting as the legislative authority for the District of Columbia, see U.S. Const. art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 17, enacted the District of Columbia Workmen's Compensation Act of 1928, which simply made the substantive and procedural provisions of the LHWCA applicable to private sector employees in the District. Pub.L. No. 419, 45 Stat. 600 (1928) (codified at 36 D.C.Code Sec. 501 (1973)). 3 A half-century later, after the District had achieved limited home rule, the Council of the District of Columbia repealed the 1928 Act and replaced it with the Workers Compensation Act of 1979. See D.C.Code Sec. 36-301, et seq. (1988). 4 See generally District of Columbia v. Greater Washington Central Labor Council, 442 A.2d 110, 115-17 (D.C.1982) (upholding Council's authority under Self-Government Act to repeal the 1928 Act as an Act of Congress restricted in its application exclusively in or to the District), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1016, 103 S.Ct. 1261, 75 L.Ed.2d 487 (1983). 9 The Council's repeal of the 1928 Act was designed to divorce[ ] the local workers' compensation system entirely from the [LHWCA]. O'Connell v. Maryland Steel Erectors, Inc., 495 A.2d 1134, 1141 (D.C.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1066, 106 S.Ct. 1378, 89 L.Ed.2d 603 (1986), quoted in Railco, 564 A.2d at 1176. The LHWCA was considered too broad and too generous, and the 1979 Act was intended to bring the District's workers' compensation law more in line with that of its neighboring jurisdictions. See generally Hughes v. District of Columbia Department of Employment Services, 498 A.2d 567 (D.C.1985). In contrast to the 1928 Act's extension of coverage to an employer carrying on any employment in the District of Columbia, 36 D.C.Code Sec. 501 (1973), the 1979 Act restricts the geographic scope of coverage to employment that, at the time of injury or death, is principally localized in the District of Columbia, D.C.Code Sec. 36-303(a) (1988). 10 Notwithstanding its repeal, the 1928 Act remains in force under the general savings statute, 1 U.S.C. Sec. 109 (1982), for the sole purpose of preserving the provisions of the Longshoremen's Act, as they existed in 1982, for the benefit of employees whose claims are derived from injuries occurring before the [1979] Act became law. Keener, 800 F.2d at 1175 (emphasis omitted); see also Garrett v. Washington Air Compressor Co., 466 A.2d 462, 462 n. 1 (D.C.1983). Poorly drafted in this respect, the 1979 Act itself has no savings clause and does not define when an occupational disease or injury is deemed to occur for purposes of temporal coverage. The silence of the 1979 Act on this issue gave rise to the present controversy.