Court Opinion

ID: 9746398
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:14:23.892621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:12.813904
License: Public Domain

MURPHY, C.J.,
dissenting.
Until today, Belschner v. Anchor Post Products Co., 227 Md. 89, 175 A.2d 419 (1961), decided in 1961, stood for the proposition that, under the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Law, an employee who suffers from an occupational disease, but who returns to work at the same or a higher wage level, is not eligible for permanent partial disability benefits. In such circumstances, the employee, not having sustained an economic loss, is not “actually incapacitated,” either partly or totally, “from performing his work in the last occupation in which he was injuriously exposed to the hazards of such [occupational] disease,” as required by the statute. See Md. Code (1957, 1985 Repl.Vol) art. 101, § 22(a); § 67(13) and (15)). The Legislature has acquiesced in this interpretation of the statute for 26 years and thus the judicial gloss placed on the statute by Belschner is well engrained in the law. I do not, therefore, agree with the majority that a worker who claims compensation for permanent partial disability produced by an occupational disease need not show actual wage loss as a prerequisite to recovery. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Actual incapacitation from work due to occupational disease is the test under the statute. As the majority recognizes, this test differs entirely from the anatomical or industrial loss of use criteria involved in accidental injury cases. Belschner cannot, in my judgment, fairly be read to establish, as the majority holds, that “wage loss at most is one of several factors to be considered when making a determination of actual incapacity.” Indeed, as the Court of Special Appeals recognized in Adams v. Western Elec*196tric Co., 63 Md.App. 587, 493 A.2d 392, cert. denied 304 Md. 301, 498 A.2d 1186 (1985), the precise issue in Belschner was whether an employee, who suffered from an occupational disease, but “who continued to perform his work in a satisfactory manner without loss of wages in the same occupation he had been engaged in for years” was entitled to permanent partial benefits. The Court in Belschner focused on whether, in such circumstances, the employee was actually disabled. It concluded that:
“an employee is not incapacitated [and therefore not disabled from an occupational disease] within the intent of the law ‘if, though injured, [he] still has the capacity, the ability to, and does continue to perform his regular work, for which he was employed, and receives his usual pay for the work.’” 227 Md. at 93, 175 A.2d 419.
Accordingly, in Belschner, because the employee was able to continue to perform reasonably analogous work within the same occupational class at the same or higher wages, he was not actually incapacitated “from performing his work in the last occupation in which he was injuriously exposed to the hazards of [an occupational] disease.”
However commendable the result reached by the majority in this case may appear, it is plainly at odds with the precepts of Belschner, and overlooks our closing statement in that case: “If there is a need to liberalize the law or to change what we think it plainly means, that is a legislative, not a judicial, function.” 227 Md. at 95, 175 A.2d 419.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.