Court Opinion

ID: 9645563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:28:25.615888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:27.926990
License: Public Domain

GARRITY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I believe the trial judge correctly determined that “disablement” is a necessary threshold element of a compensable claim for occupational deafness, just as it is a requirement for the compensability of claims for any other type of occupational ailment. Furthermore, as did the trial court, I believe the holding in Belschner v. Anchor Post Products, Inc., 227 Md. 89, 175 A.2d 419 (1961), to be dispositive of the issue.
In Belschner, evidence established that although the claimant had suffered a 44% binaural loss of hearing due to noise exposure over a period of 12 years while operating a saw, he continued to perform his work in a satisfactory manner and without any loss of wages. The Court held that compensation for occupational deafness was limited by the language in § 22(a) of art. 101, to a person “disabled ” from performing his work. Under the statute in question, “disablement” is 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.
While the Court observed that there was nothing in the statute as to occupational deafness which eliminated the necessity of first meeting the requirement of § 22(a) of being “actually incapacitated,” it invited the Legislature to *109amend the statute “if there is a need to liberalize the law or to change what we think it plainly means ...” Id. at 95. Contrary to the majority’s interpretation of § 25A that the Legislature “specifically provided” that compensable occupational deafness would be “any loss of hearing in excess of 15 decibels ... without regard to disablement,” I believe that such interpretation is unduly strained.
In pursuing our goal to discern and effectuate the actual purpose of the legislation, we must rely primarily upon the language chosen by the General Assembly to express its intention and should, in construing the statute, seek to avoid results that are unreasonable or inconsistent with common sense. Frank v. Baltimore County, 284 Md. 655, 399 A.2d 250 (1979). In construing the act, its purpose must be borne in mind, and such construction be given as will effectuate the intent and spirit of the act, unless that construction is plainly denied by the language. State v. Richardson, 233 Md. 534, 197 A.2d 428 (1964).
Notwithstanding appellant’s theory that § 25A stands independently, and is, therefore, not subject to the threshold requirement of disablement, I believe the clear intent of § 25A is to provide both a qualifying standard of compensibility (loss of hearing in excess of 15 decibels) and a technical format by which to measure such hearing loss due to industrial noise. See Armco Steel Corp. v. Trafton, 35 Md.App. 658, 668, 371 A.2d 1128 (1977), where we affirmed a disability rating formulae prescribed by § 25A.1 Indeed, I believe that any other interpretation of § 25A would be unreasonable and contrary to public policy. The very raison détre for providing workmen’s compensation in the wake of contracting an occupational disease or disorder is to restore to a worker that portion of lost wages due to the physical disability caused by that occupation.
Wage-loss legislation is designed to restore to the worker a portion ... of wages lost due to the three major *110causes of wage-loss: physical disability, economic unemployment, and old age. The crucial operative fact is that of wage loss; the cause of the wage loss merely dictates the category of legislation applicable. Now if a workman undergoes a period of wage loss due to all three conditions, it does not follow that he should receive three sets of benefits simultaneously and thereby recover more than his actual wage. He is experiencing only one wage loss and, in any logical system, should receive only one wage-loss benefit. [4 A. Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 97.10, at 18-19 (1979).] (emphasis added).
Indeed, any other result would operate as an open invitation to thousands of workers in shipyards, machine shops, factories, stadiums, and other noisy employment settings to file claims for impaired deafness while continuing to draw full wages. See IB Larson at § 41.51, 7-426. We need but quickly glance at the resultant legislative flurry which accompanied the ruling in Slawinski v. J.H. Williams, 298 N.Y. 546, 81 N.E.2d 93 (1948) to discount such thought.
The New York Court of Appeals in Slawinski permitted recovery for occupational deafness without any showing of wage loss. Fearing a similar flood of hearing loss claims throughout the nation, the ruling caused “[t]he greatest flurry in the occupational disease field after the recognition of silicosis as a compensable disease in the early 1930’s and before the advent of the asbestos crisis.” IB Larson at 7-423. As pointed out by Professor Larson,
As employers and carriers became more conscious of the impairment-of-hearing problem, they discovered that as many as 25 percent of applicants for industrial jobs of all kinds had some loss of hearing, by no means all employment-connected, of course. Here again, if a state, like Maryland, had a clear rule that benefits could not be paid on the theory of occupational disease in the absence of actual wage loss, no unusual problem arose. But in some other states, fears began to be expressed that the flood of claims might be ruinous to insurance *111carriers who, as in the case of silicosis, had not collected premiums against this kind of liability, (emphasis added).
Id. at 7-426.
As the Legislature provided in § 25A much needed technical parameters in measuring binaural loss of hearing due to industrial noise exposure, but did not eliminate the need on the part of a claimant to first show he or she was “actually incapacitated” by suffering some disablement, I would affirm the judgment in accordance with the holding in Belschner v. Anchor Post Products, Inc., supra.

. Although the majority places reliance on Armco Steel, the issue of disability was neither raised nor discussed by the court.