Opinion ID: 1956604
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: 1a Linkage to the Employment as a Precondition of the Applicability of the Statutory Presumption.

Text: In this case claimant proceeded in support of her petition by going forward with evidence, in the form of a stipulation of the parties, which established the following facts concerning the incident causing her husband's death. On November 20, 1972 claimant's husband was employed as a policeman in the Police Department of the City of Portland. On that day he was operating an automobile proceeding in a westerly direction on a public way, Route 22. The automobile came into collision with a bus operated by an agent, or employee, of the Brunswick Transportation Company for the benefit of students at the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham. The collision occurred just over the City of Portland line, within the City of Westbrook. The City contends that this evidence shows that the collision causing Toomey's death occurred off the premises of Toomey's employment, and hence the claimant failed preliminarily to establish such a linkage to Toomey's employment as the City asserts is a necessary antecedent to trigger the statutory presumption into play for claimant's benefit. We begin the analysis of this contention by evaluating the City's reliance on the law of New York and Massachusetts. We note, initially, that the statutory presumption in New York, as relating to . . . any proceeding for the enforcement of a claim for compensation . . . [4] (emphasis supplied), so markedly exceeds the more restricted compass of the Maine presumption that, prima facie, different policy considerations seem to be operating. This factor alone would tend to diminish the significance of New York case law as a guide to the formulation of Maine law. In any event, however, we agree with the view expressed by the Massachusetts Court in Woloshchuck's Case, 325 Mass. 10, 88 N.E.2d 640, 641 (1949) which rejects such kind of preliminary linkage as the case of Daus v. Gunderman & Sons, 283 N.Y. 459, 28 N.E.2d 914 (1940) establishes as the law of New York, because it . . . gives less weight to the statutory presumption than our Legislature seems to have intended. [5] Turning, then, to the Massachusetts law as a source of guidance, more particularly since the language of the Maine statute parallels that of Massachusetts and the presumption arises from similarly limited circumstances, we find the Massachusetts case law inconclusive. Woloshchuck's Case, supra, emphasizes that Goddu's Case, 323 Mass. 397, 82 N.E.2d 232 (1948) was not a holding that the statutory presumption remains inapplicable until it first is made to appear that the injury underlying the compensation claim was received in the course of the employment. The Court makes the point that such a view would denigrate the force of the presumption as supplying every element necessary to justify an award of compensation, including that the personal injury be received in the course of the employment. Moreover, after thus clarifying Goddu's Case, the Court decides Woloshchuck's Case itself by treating the statutory presumption as in play without undertaking further inquiry whether or not there must be a showing of any kind of linkage to the employment as a necessary precondition of the applicability of the statutory presumption. The only other indication as to the Massachusetts law on the subject of preliminary linkage appears in Lapinsky's Case, 325 Mass. 13, 88 N.E.2d 642 (1949), decided the same day as Woloshchuck's Case. There, after stating that the circumstances before it would be sufficient to satisfy a requirement, if any, of a preliminary showing of linkage to the employment, the Court adds the bare dictum: We are not to be understood as deciding that mere proof of an injury with nothing whatever to indicate that it had any connection with the contract of employment would be a sufficient foundation for making the presumption apply. (emphasis supplied) (88 N.E.2d at 644) Apart from this caveat in Lapinsky's Case, we derive no further guidance from the Massachusetts cases as to the existence vel non of a requirement for a preliminary showing of linkage to the employment or, if there be such a requirement, the kind of showing necessary, rather than sufficient, to satisfy it. From the foregoing evaluation of the law elsewhere which might be of assistance to us in the formulation of Maine law we conclude that we are left, essentially, to arrive at our own independent conclusions by a careful analysis of those features of the Maine statute that we take to be the significant signposts of legislative intendment. Proceeding with such analysis, we observe, first, that the clause, . . . where the employee has been killed, or is physically or mentally unable to testify. . . (emphasis supplied) is an ambiguous modifier of the phrase which precedes, [i]n any claim for compensation . .. It is broad enough to include not only the incident upon which the claim for compensation is based but also an incident which occurs thereafter but prior to the hearing on the compensation claimso long as in either instance the employee has by death, or otherwise, been rendered physically or mentally unable to testify at the hearing. Despite such potentially expansive compass of particular textual language in Section 64-A, we believe the true intendment of the Legislature, as reflected by the entirety of the statutory language, is more accurately depicted by construing the ambiguous phrase under consideration as having the meaning which would be conveyed were the language: In any claim for compensation, [based on an incident] where the employee has been killed, or . . . [otherwise rendered] physically or mentally unable to testify, . . .. Thus interpreted, the statute states expressly two antecedents which must appear to trigger the presumption into play: (1) an incident which causes the employee to be killed or otherwise made physically or mentally unable to testify in aid of (2) a pending claim for compensation relating to that incident. The position taken by the City on appeal raises the issue whether, even if not expressly stated in the statute, a third antecedent must be held necessarily implicit: the existence of additional facts which in some way relate such incident to the employee's employmentthe employment being the universe of discourse by virtue of which alone a claim for compensation can be held justifiable. We think that a fair assessment of the legislative intendment demands the conclusion that it was the Legislature's premise in creating the Section 64-A presumption to avoid engendering, or encouraging, the filing of hopeless claims. Since, in addition, the Legislature must be taken as enacting laws to guide the conduct of rational persons, it is a corollary of the above-mentioned legislative premise that the presumption is intended to be in play only for the benefit of a compensation claimant whose filing of a claim is a rational act. We therefore conclude that implicit in Section 64-A is a third prerequisite to the applicability of the presumption therein established. Recognizing that the presumption is calculated to serve, at least in part, as the functional substitute for evidence which, within bounds of reason, may be projected as capable of being provided by the testimony of the employee had the employee not been disabled from testifying, we delineate this third prerequisite for triggering the applicability of the presumption as follows. There must be evidence presented of circumstances which indicate that the bringing of a claim for compensation is a rational actthat is, that the incident to which the claim relates has some rational potential of eventuating in an award of compensation when it is deemed supplemented by testimony which, within reasonable limits, may be conceived as potentially forthcoming from the employee were the employee available as a witness. Applying this implied requirement of preliminary linkage to this case, we sustain the Commissioner's conclusion that claimant had the benefit of the presumption. The stipulation of facts presented by claimant gave sufficient indication that the filing of a claim was a rational act. The circumstances revealed by the stipulation indicate rational potential for an award of compensation were claimant to have the benefit of testimony projected within the limits of reason as capable of being provided by the employee, if available. We reject the contention of the City of Portland that such rational potential was dissipated as a matter of law by the stipulated fact that the . . . accident occurred just over the City of Portland line, within the City of Westbrook. Even if we assume, without deciding, that this fact shows an injury sustained off the premises of the employment, it cannot be saidmore particularly since the injury was received practically at the boundary of the hypothesized employment premises that as a matter of law the rational potential for an award of compensation was destroyed. As indicated in our recent opinion in Abshire v. City of Rockland, Me., 388 A.2d 512 (1978), that a city police officer sustains an injury on a public street which may not be technically part of the employment premises does not per se make unreasonable the potential for an award of compensation. The Abshire opinion discloses that especially in the case of a police officer a variety of additional circumstances may reasonably be projected as capable of being supplied by the testimony of the employee, were it available, to justify an award of compensation based on an incident occurring off, but close to, the technical boundary of the employer's premises. These could include the special errand circumstances involved in the actual decision of Abshire or the many kinds of circumstances alluded to in footnote 3 of the opinion in that case. Abshire thus reveals this Court's recognition that police officers are within a grouping of employees who have in common that they may well be engaged in work-related activity when they are on a public way, whether within or reasonably close to the area constituting the primary locus of their employment. In this case the claimant came forward with evidence sufficient to put the statutory presumption in play for her benefit.