Court Opinion

ID: 9697804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:31:07.610251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:39.122355
License: Public Domain

MARKELL, J.,
delivered the following dissenting opinion.
If the legislature includes among beneficiaries under a workmen’s compensation law a paramour or mistress, eo nomine or by any of the innumerable synonyms or euphemisms for that term, or by the word “dependent” in its broadest sense, as covering receipt of support in any relationship in life, lawful or unlawful, the courts cannot invalidate such legislation by declaring it to be againgt public policy. When the legislature has spoken, public policy is what the legislature says. Nor can the courts exclude from the benefits of a statute, because of personal misconduct, anyone whom the legislature has included. The workmen’s compensation law excludes *380from benefits only employees or dependents when injury or death is caused by self-inflicted injury, wilful misconduct or solely by intoxication of the employee. Code 1947 Supp., Art. 101, sec. 45. In the first Schmeizl case [184 Md. 584, 42 A. 2d 113] we said, “Under the Statute of 13 Edward I, Chapter 34 (if in force in Maryland) a wife by elopement and adultery forfeits dower, 2 Blackstone’s Commentaries 130; Poe on Pleading, § 277. Under the Act of 1809, Ch. 138, Sec. 7 (Code, 1939, Art. 27, Sec. 19), both dower and a wife’s distributive share of personal estate are forfeited on conviction of bigamy. If the ‘public policy’ of these statutes is to be expanded, this must be done by the Legislature. Whether morals would be improved, or perjury increased, by making next of kin avengers of a decedent’s marital wrongs, is not for the court to determine.”
These truisms lead nowhere toward the decision of the instant case. As a ground of decision, they beg the question. The legislature has not so included, as a beneficiary, a paramour or a party to any illicit relationship, however common or uncommon. This court has.never construed the act as including any such person.. The question before us is one of statutory construction. The legislature has said that the act shall be so construed as to effectuate its general purpose. Its general purpose has not been declared by the legislature or held by this court to include endowment of illicit relationships. It is reasonable to suppose (when a statute is susceptible of such a construction) that the legislative intent was not contrary to the settled public policy of centuries. In this sense “public policy” is a factor in statutory construction. Gritta’s Case, 236 Mass. 204, 207, 127 N. E. 889.
In the statute, not only since 1947, but from the beginning since 1914, the only inclusive statement of beneficiaries is the single word “dependent”, paraphrased by the expressions “families and dependents” in thé preamble to the Act of 1914, ch. 800, and “family or dependents” at the beginning of the present section 35. The *381act “does not define the term ‘dependent’ ”, but it has been defined by this court and other courts in many cases, briefly stated in 36 pages (plus 11 pages of the latest pocket supplement) of “Words and Phrases”. Meyler v. Mayor & City Council, 179 Md. 211, 215, 17 A. 2d 762. Nowhere except in Indiana has the word been construed as covering a relationship known to be illicit and nowhere has it been given as broad a meaning as its ordinary meaning. The Oxford Dictionary defines “dependent” as “a person who depends on another for support, position, etc.; a retainer, attendant, subordinate, servant.” The Century Dictionary defines it as “One who depends on or looks to another for support or favor; a retainer; as, the prince was followed by a numerous train of dependents,” and cites, from Fletcher, “I am an heir, sweet lady, However I appear a poor dependent,” and from Addison (referring to Sir Roger de Coverley’s “chaplain”), “He lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependent.” In Grant v. Kotwall, 133 Md. 573, 575-578, 105 A. 758, and in Meyler v. Mayor & City Council, supra, 179 Md. 214-219, 17 A. 2d 762, this court reviewed the facts and authorities at length to show that a mother and a stepdaughter respectively (both within the exclusive statement of beneficiaries before 1947) were not servants, but were “dependents” in this court’s narrowed definition of the term. In Scott v. Independent Ice Co., 135 Md. 343, 346-347, 109 A. 117, it was held that “family”, if given the broad meaning which includes servants — and a mistress “living in”— could not expand the exclusive statement of dependents as limited to specified classes of relations. In the Grant and Meyler cases the claimants were expressly within the exclusive classes, but the inclusive statement was construed as not including servants and was given a meaning much narrower than the ordinary meaning of “dependent.” Except in Indiana, the courts have found no more difficulty in construing “dependent” as not including illicit relationships than as not including servants.
*382Since June .1, 1947 section 35 of :'the act provides, “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.?’ Before the Act of 1947, ch. 895, this provision  wás limited to “all other cases” and was preceded by (1) a presumption (rebuttable), viz., that certain persons, a wife or invalid husband and in stated circumstances children, “shall be presumed to be wholly dependent for support upon a deceased employee” and followed by (3) an exclusive statement of beneficiaries, viz., “but no person shall be considered as dependent unless such person be a father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, stepchild or grandchild, or brother or sister * * * including those otherwise specified [wife, husband, child] in this Section.” By the Act of 1947 clauses (1) and (3) were repealed, leaving unchanged the original inclusive statement of beneficiaries, viz., the undefined word “dependent”. For present purposes, the repeal of the rebuttable presumption has no significance. The repeal of clause (3) adequately explains itself. It leaves the question of dependency to the facts of each case, instead of arbitrarily including a mother, sister or stepchild and excluding an aunt, a niece, a mother-in-law, and many similar relations or persons not related by blood or marriage.
Repeal of the exclusive clause furnishes no reason for looking beyond the removal of this arbitrary barrier and expanding the only inclusive word, ■ “dependent,” to include a knowing partner in an illicit relationship, which it has never (except in Indiana) been construed to include. In Maryland when the legislature had the question brought directly to its attention, it did not include a mistress. In Scott v. Independent Ice Company, 1919, 135 Md. 343, 109 A. 117, this court held that, because of the exclusive clause, neither a mistress nor an' illegiti*383mate child could be a “dependent”. By Chapter 456 of the Acts of 1920, the legislature promptly amended the definition of “child” in section 67, Code (1947 Supp.), so as to include an illegitimate child within the exclusive clause in section 35. Neither then nor since has the legislature taken any similar action to include a mistress as a dependent.
In the instant case the mistress is the only claimant. As between her and the insurer, her plight naturally may evoke sympathy. But the same question would arise between mistress and wife or children or both. If the mistress is wholly dependent, she would take to the exclusion of partially dependent wife and children. If a “kept woman” may be a “dependent”, so may a kept man, in either case whether kept by a man or by a woman. The more abject the illicit relationship, the more likely the “dependent” partner is to be wholly dependent.
A workmen’s compensation law is, indeed, not a code of morals. But we are not at liberty to ascribe to the legislature an intent to upset fundamentals still recognized by law and society (however often transgressed by individuals), in order to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.
The question presented involves no question of fact to be relegated to the commission. No more reasonable than upsetting established standards would be establishment of a new moral system by which in each case this court or the commission would make an appraisal (necessarily arbitrary) of “social values” in each illicit relationship.
I think tiie judgment should be affirmed.