Court Opinion

ID: 9766906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:02:16.83487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:27.054359
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Industrial Accident Commission awarded the claimant below, five-year old Bennie Thomas Brannan of Southern Pines, North Carolina, compensation as a partial dependent of his father, who died as a result of an accident in Maryland. On appeal by the employer and the insurer, Judge Carter, sitting in the Baltimore City Court without a jury, found on the evidence before the Commission that the child was totally dependent on the father and entered judgment accordingly.
In 1952 domestic difficulties led to a written agreement by *400the claimant’s father to pay his mother the sum of $20.00 a week until their son became of age, as well as all doctor and hospital bills of the child. The couple mended their differences temporarily, but in July 1953 separated for good. Mrs. Brannan stayed in Southern Pines and the husband, who was an electrical lineman, worked not too far from there for various power companies. From August 1953 to June 1954, the husband paid $80.00 most months for the support of his wife and child, although he paid nothing in one or two of the months. Since June 1954 he has made no payments. After he left North Carolina without saying where he was going, his wife called his former employers and the union to which he belonged, in an effort to find him, and wrote a letter asking for money to the address they gave her. She received no reply to her letter. On February 8, 1956, Brannan was killed on the job in Baltimore. Word of his death reached Mrs. Brannan and claim for compensation was duly filed on behalf of the child.
In 1955 Mrs. Brannan had obtained a divorce and married Bynum R. Bailey. The Bailey household in Southern Pines consists of the husband and wife, her mother, a child by the present marriage, the claimant Bennie Thomas, and two children of Mrs. Bailey’s by a husband prior to Brannan. At about the time of her separation from Brannan, Mrs. Bailey inherited $3,000 from her father and used this in part for the support of the claimant and in part for the payment of household bills and expenses.
The employer and insurer contend here, as they did before the Commission and the court below, that since the deceased employee was not actually supporting the child at the time of the injury causing his death, there was no dependency as a matter of law. The appellee contends that the ultimate legal test of dependency is whether or not, on all the facts, there is a reasonable probability as of the date of the injury that his legal obligation to support the claimant actually would be carried out in the future. Judge Carter found that the mother had been reasonably diligent in attempting to locate the father for the purpose of compelling him to support their child and “eventually would undoubtedly have been successful in lo-*401eating him through his union membership. Under the Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act (Code, Art. 89C) she could have compelled him to support his child.” He concluded therefore that “* * * there was not only a ‘reasonable probability’ but a reasonable certainty that the deceased’s legal and moral obligation of support would be fulfilled.” He said further: “Young Bennie Thomas lost a very real asset when the opportunity to compel his father to support him was cut off. It is the very purpose of the Act to protect dependents from situations of this kind. The fact that the deceased workman was not actually making money payments at his death was a very temporary condition which would have surely been rectified in the future.”
Since 1947 the Maryland Compensation Act (now Code, 1957, Art. 101, Sec. 36 (8) (d)) has provided that: “In all cases, questions of dependency, in whole, or in part, shall be determined by the Commission in accordance with the facts in each particular case existent at the time of the injury resulting in death of such employee.” This Court, in Brooks v. Bethlehem Steel Company, 199 Md. 29, 33, said: “When section 35 was amended in 1947 the exclusive enumeration of beneficiaries and the presumptions of total dependency of wife and children were omitted and questions of dependency, in whole or in part, in all cases, were made questions of fact, construed by this court to mean the fact of receipt of pecuniary support, whether in money, services or otherwise in money’s worth. Legal or moral duty to support is not necessary, and in the absence of actual support is not sufficient, to constitute dependency.” In Havre de Grace Fireworks Co. v. Howe, 206 Md. 158, 164, we said: “Generally defined, a ‘dependent,’ within the meaning of the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act, is one who relies wholly or in part upon a workman for the reasonable necessities of life at the time of his accidental injury. Meyler v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 179 Md. 211, 215, 17 A. 2d 762. A legal or moral obligation to support someone, in the absence of actual support, does not create dependency within the meaning of our Act.”
It has been held in other jurisdictions in cases where the *402statutes made dependency a question of fact that a claimant must show reasonable grounds of expectations for continuing or future support and maintenance and that in determining whether such a probability of actual support exists, the absence of actual payments even for a substantial period before the death of the employee is not necessarily conclusive but is but one of a number of factors, such as the earning capacity of the decedent, the length of time support has been withheld, whether failure to support was acquiesced to, the diligence with which the obligation has been pursued, and the probability of the successful tracing of the decedent. For example, in Drouin v. Snodgrass Co. (Me.), 23 A. 2d 631, 633, the Court said: “* * * it is generally held that a finding of dependency cannot rest on proof alone of the relation of parent and child but there must be some evidence of a reasonable probability and expectation that the obligation of the parent will be fulfilled and thereby have some real as well as mere theoretical value.” The Arizona Court used almost the same language in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Industrial Commission (Ariz.), 269 P. 77, 78. Other cases applying a similar test where there had been no actual contribution for a longer period than in the instant case, are cited below.1
*403Maryland cases have discussed the element of the probability of actual support. State Industrial Accident Commission v. Downton, 135 Md. 412, 416, dealt with a situation where a father, long divorced, irregularly gave his children, who lived with their mother, small amounts of money and clothing. Judge Stockbridge for the Court cited several of the earlier cases in the line relied on by the claimant here, saying that they “do not baldly hold that the legal obligation determines the question of dependency, but that such legal obligation must be coupled with a reasonable probability that such obligation will be fulfilled * * *” and decided as a matter of law that the children were not total dependents. In Harvey v. Roche & Son, 148 Md. 363, 369, 370, 371, the jury found a widow to have been totally dependent on her late husband, from whom she had been separated. She contended that the husband had contributed regularly to her support during the time they were apart, and her opponents offered testimony that he had given her nothing during that time. The trial court modified a suggested prayer and instructed the jury that: “if there was no reasonable probability that she would be actually supported by the said William T. Harvey” at the critical date they must find she was not wholly dependent. Chief Judge Bond for the Court said: “To the modified instruction, the employer and insurer object that its reference to the probability of support, instead of actual support, gave a jury a misleading test, as actual dependence on the injured man’s earnings is the only basis of compensation. The instruction appears to be made up of the statement of the law quoted in State Industrial Acc. Com. v. Downton, 135 Md. 412, 416. It is true that actual dependence upon the earnings of the deceased is the test of the right to compensation under the act, and a question of probability would, accurately speaking, arise only when an interruption *404to regular support is to be considered. The question whether the interruption is only temporary, or means an end to support, is one of probability. Exactly that question does not arise in this case, and the employer and insurer urge that the effect of the instruction under the circumstances may have been to lead the jury to base a finding of dependence on what they conceived to have been probabilities, for the future, apart from any actual dependence. But the difference between actual support at the time of death and ‘probability that she would be supported at said date,’ as the instruction has it, is a narrow one * * It was held that there was no prejudicial error in the granting of the prayer in view of the real issue in the case of “actual contributions or lack of contributions to the wife’s support”, and the other granted instructions which referred the jury “to actual past support as the test * *
In Kendall v. Housing Authority, 196 Md. 370, 376, the Court speaking through Judge Henderson said that when the 1947 Legislature made the test of dependency the facts in each case existent at the time of the injury: “* * * we think it left as the only requirement a finding of fact that the claimant was subsisting, and would probably continue to subsist, in whole or in part upon the earnings of the workman at the time of the injury.”
In Havre de Grace Fireworks Co. v. Howe, to which we have referred above, the argument was presented that the father in that case, whose children had been in an orphanage for some years, was planning to purchase a home in which he would support them within a matter of months, and that this probability justified a finding that they were dependent on him in fact at the time of his injury and death. The Court said at page 167: “Even assuming that the father had planned to build a house, and that there was a possibility that he could have carried out the plan to bring the children back to his home and support them if he had not been killed, we cannot disregard the explicit mandate of the statute that the question of dependency shall be determined from the facts existing at the time of the employee’s injury resulting in his death. Code, 1951, art. 101, sec. 35 (8) (d). As we said in Meyler v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 179 Md. *405211, 215, 17 A. 2d 762, when the death of a workman ensues from an accidental injury, the right of his dependent to workmen’s compensation becomes fixed as of the date of the injury irrespective of any subsequent change of condition.”
The case before us presents the question of probability arising from interruption to regular support, suggested by Chief Judge Bond in the language of Harvey v. Roche & Son, quoted above, and we must determine whether the probability was that the “interruption to regular support” was temporary or meant “an end to support” so as to negate a finding of dependency in fact. We are persuaded that “the facts * * * existent at the time of the injury resulting in death * * *” were not such as to permit the finding of the trial court that there was dependency in fact at the time of Bran-nan’s death. Although after he and his wife had separated he paid for nine of eleven months, for twenty months thereafter he made no payments at all and gave no indication that he would ever again. Apparently he had begun to support another woman in June of 1954, when payments ceased (although he did not marry her), and this may well have been the reason he stopped supporting his son. Soon after he stopped paying, while he was still in North Carolina, his wife made somewhat casual inquiries as to his whereabouts, but did not pursue them or attempt to obtain help from a lawyer or from local or State authorities in exacting support from her husband. We see no basis for a determination that there was any reasonable probability of resumption of support in the foreseeable future as of the date of the injury.
The conclusion we have reached disposes of the need to consider the right of the trial court to find total dependency where only the employer and insurer and not the claimant had appealed from the Commission’s finding of partial dependency.

Judgment reversed, with costs.

. Merrill v. Penasco Lumber Co. (N. M.), 304 P. 73, 74 (two years); Kennedy v. Keller (Mo. App.), 37 S. W. 2d 452 (three years); Potts v. Niddrie and Benhar Coal Co. (1913), A. C. 531, 6 B. W. C. C. 774 (two years of small payments amounting in all to 3 pounds, followed by two years of no payments at all); Dobbies v. The Egypt and Levant S. S. Co., 50 Scot. L. R. 222, 6 B. W. C. C. 348 (three years). See also McGarry v. Industrial Commission (Utah), 222 P. 592; In re Carroll (Ind. App.), 116 N. E. 844.
In Louisiana the Legislature amended the act in 1926 to provide that in questions of dependency as a matter of fact “the mere expectation or hope of future contributions to the support of an alleged dependent by an employee shall not constitute proof of dependency as a fact.” In Haynes v. Loffland Bros. Co. (La.), 40 S. 2d 243, 244-245, the Court said that ever since the adoption of the amendment in 1926 “the appellate courts of this state have consistently held that one not conclusively presumed to be dependent upon the earnings of the deceased employee for support * * * must not only prove he is or they are legal dependents of the de*403ceased but also that the deceased employee was actually contributing to their support at the time of the accident and death.” For a similar holding that there must be actual support as opposed to an expectation of support, see Blanton v. Wheeler & Howes Co., 91 Conn. 226.