Court Opinion

ID: 9516656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:48:08.420925+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:03.399981
License: Public Domain

McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I do not agree that the General Assembly intended to mandate use of the scheduled disability section for determining the degree of previous impairment in Subsequent Injury Fund cases. Section 66(1) of Article 101 contemplates, indeed requires, that the determination of the percentage of industrial disability resulting from the combined effects of a previous impairment and a subsequent disability be made in terms of the disability of the body as a whole. That is precisely what the Commission did in this case in finding a combined disability of 55 percent of the body as a *638whole, made up of a 30 percent industrial disability resulting from the previous loss of sight in one eye and a 25 percent disability resulting from the current industrial injury. The majority’s approach artificially, and unnecessarily, deviates from the intended legislative scheme and provides a windfall to the employee. Instead of properly allowing the Commission to determine the actual percentage of previous industrial disability suffered by a claimant, the majority insists upon using a schedule established for an entirely different purpose.
The schedule set forth in Section 36 serves a useful purpose in avoiding endless litigation concerning the prediction of the extent of industrial disability likely to result from an anatomical disability suffered to a part of the body. However, as useful as the schedule may be in the initial awarding of benefits for the future, it is unnecessary and inapplicable when the task is the retrospective evaluation of a pre-existing disability.
In the instant case, the Commission could and did determine the overall industrial disability that the loss of an eye had actually caused to this claimant at the time the current injury occurred. The Commission found that that disability was 30 percent of the body as a whole. The effect of the majority’s decision is to require that the finding of this pre-existing disability necessarily be deemed to be 50 percent of the body as a whole. This is so because the schedule established by Section 36 awards 250 weeks for the loss of an eye, and under the current worker’s compensation law the whole body is measured in terms of 500 weeks. See Art. 101, § 36(3)(j). Adding the 50 percent pre-existing disability to the 25 percent disability that the Commission found to have resulted from the current injury produces an overall disability of 75 percent of the body as a whole. This is a disability that this claimant does not have, according to the findings of the Commission, and it is a disability that should not be awarded. The majority.has rewritten the findings of the Commission in a manner that I *639believe is inconsistent with the overall intent of the legislature in adopting the Subsequent Injury Fund concept.
I would reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court for Frederick County.