Court Opinion

ID: 9766907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:02:16.840082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:27.057814
License: Public Domain

Hornby, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
The majority saw no basis for a determination that there was any reasonable probability that the father of Bennie Thomas Brannan might resume supporting his son in the *406foreseeable future on the date of the injury from which the father died. I disagree because I believe there was evidence from.which the trier of facts could rationally find a reasonable probability that the mother of Bennie could again discover the whereabouts of the boy’s father and compel him to support his son.
After Bennie’s mother and father had separated the father supported the boy for nine out of eleven months as he had agreed to do. But sometime after the expiration of the first year of separation, the father left North Carolina, and made no further payments during the approximately twenty months that elapsed prior to his death. The mother, describing her efforts to locate her ex-husband, testified that she “called different companies [that he had worked for] and * * * finally called the union in Charlotte [North Carolina] that he was a member of, and they said he was working * * * for a man in Goldsboro [North Carolina] and by the time I got a letter to him—he left from there before I could catch him and that was the last I heard of him being anywhere around.” On this testimony and the other evidence produced, the trial court concluded that there was a reasonable possibility amounting, indeed, to a reasonable certainty that the father would be located and compelled to resume the support payments and found (i) that the interruption of support was temporary and (ii) that Bennie lost a valuable asset when the opportunity to compel his father to support him was destroyed by the death of the father. In so doing, I am not convinced that the lower court was clearly erroneous. Maryland Rule 886a. And, unless it is clear that it was, this Court should not set aside its findings on the evidence. Moreover, as we said in Havre de Grace Fireworks Co. v. Howe, 206 Md. 158, 164-5, 110 A. 2d 666 (1955):
“We apply in workmen’s compensation cases the familiar rule that where there is any evidence from which a rational conclusion may be drawn, as opposed to the theory of the prayer for a directed verdict, the weight and value of such evidence should be left for the consideration of the jury, and before *407such a prayer can be granted, the court must assume the truth of all the evidence tending to sustain the claim or defense, as the case may be, and of all inferences of fact fairly deducible from it. Moreover, the Court of Appeals cannot make a critical analysis of the evidence produced by both sides to determine its comparative weight * *
In 2 Larson, Workmen’s Compensation (1952), Sec. 63.31, it is stated:
“On the precise issue of whether legal obligation to support can alone ground a finding of dependency, the general rule is that it cannot. There must also be either actual support, or some reasonable expectation that the legal obligation will be met.” (Emphasis added.)
The courts uniformly hold that, if an injured or deceased worker deserts his dependents and no longer contributes to their support, they cannot appear before the “commission” several years later—when the worker has been injured or dies—and claim that they are dependents. However, if despite the failure of the worker to support those who are legally dependent upon him, such dependents have made some reasonable efforts to compel him to pay them support, and it is reasonably expected that they might succeed, then the law bestows upon them the status of dependents.
In addition to the Maryland cases cited by the majority, see In re Konin, 69 Idaho 28, 202 P. 2d 239 (1949), where the deceased left his wife seven years before his death, and she never thereafter received any support from him, never communicated with him, and never attempted to make him support her; and the wife had not objected to the separation, had not looked to the decedent for support, and was apparently content to support herself; it was held that she was not dependent upon him. There were similar holdings in Sweet v. Sherwood Ice Co., 40 R. I. 203, 100 A. 316 (1917), [separation and non-support had existed for four years], and Glaze v. Hart, 225 Mo. App. 1205, 36 S. W. 2d 684 (1931), *408[wife did not expect and had never tried to require husband to support her]. See also Koeppel v. DuPont, 37 Del. 369, 183 A. 516 (1936); Lee v. Bessie, [1912] 1 K. B. 83; Peters v. Overhead, Ltd., 27 B. W. C. C. 190 (1934). Cf. Department of Mental Hygiene v. Consolidated Construction Co., 280 App. Div. 652, 117 N. Y. S. 2d 84 (1952).
On the other hand, where, as in the present case, a dependent had made an attempt to contact the deceased in order to compel support, the courts find for the dependent. An often-cited case is Merrill v. Penasco Lumber Co., 27 N. M. 632, 204 P. 72 (1922), where the deceased and his widow had been separated for two years before his death. For a few months he paid for the food for his dependents. On two occasions he sent his wife money. On another occasion he told her he would support her and the children. However, she had to depend upon her own labors to support the family. The Court, in holding that actual dependency existed, said:
“Many statutes create a presumption of dependency in favor of certain classes, but ours does not, following in this respect the original English act. But just as the existence of the marital status does not of itself prove dependency, so the lack of actual support by the husband does not of itself negative dependency. The failure to support is only one circumstance for consideration. The reasons for it, the length of its continuance, the mutual attitude and means of the parties, the probable resumption of duty, and other similar matters may have a distinct bearing on the subject. If dependency were determined only by the fact of contribution to support, a wife and children might be dependent one week and cease to be the next according to the caprice of the husband and father.” (Emphasis added).
In McGarry v. Industrial Commission, 63 Utah 81, 222 P. 592 (1923), another wife desertion case, the Court, although it was dictum, said:
“It is also reasonable to presume from the facts hereinbefore detailed that the applicant in this case *409would have enforced the legal right of her child to the support and maintenance which the law imposed upon his father if she had had the opportunity. The legal right existed and had some potential value, but the opportunity to enforce it was wanting, solely because the deceased had surreptitiously deserted and abandoned both mother and child. As contended by counsel for applicant, it would indeed be a reproach to the lawmakers of the state if it could be successfully contended under the provisions of our Industrial Act that a minor child might be a dependent and entitled to compensation if the father had only performed his legal duty during his life, and furnished or promised the child some support, but because the father failed in his legal duty, even to the point of violating the criminal laws of the state, therefore the child should not be held to be a dependent entitled to compensation.”
In In re Carroll, 65 Ind. App. 146, 116 N. E. 844 (1917), the widow had not lived with the deceased—except for one month—for nine years before his death. He had made very small, irregular payments to his wife and children. On two occasions the wife obtained Louisiana support orders, but the deceased complied with only one of the orders, and compliance with that was brief. He moved from place to place to avoid enforcement proceedings. Although the wife and children were not total dependents, the Court held that the facts might be sufficient for the “board” to find partial dependency. It was also held in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Industrial Commission, 34 Ariz. 175, 269 P. 77 (1928), that a reasonable probability of support existed because the wife had sought aid from the police, though without success, to find her deserting husband in an effort to compel him to support her.
Two English cases vividly illustrate the factual determination upon which workmen’s compensation cases should be resolved. In New Monckion Collieries, Ltd. v. Keeling, [1911] A. C. 648, there was no dependency because the wife *410had never tried to compel her husband to support her in his lifetime. Two years later, however, the same court found dependency in Potts v. Niddrie & Benhar Coal Co., [1913] A. C. 531, a case where the wife had obtained a support decree against her husband, where the decree had been enforced on one occasion by his arrest, where the husband subsequently disappeared, and where the wife and children had tried to find the worker. Viscount Haldane distinguished the Potts case from the Keeling case by saying: “There [in Keeling], there had been what was tantamount to an abandonment of the wife’s right. She had left her husband more than twenty years before his death, and had virtually given up looking to him for support for herself and her children. Here [in Potts] the wife had kept her right alive, and was apparently only waiting for the opportunity to enforce it.” He went on to say:
“The Lord Justice-Clerk says in his judgment that the true question is not, Had the applicant a legal right to maintenance by the deceased? but, Was the applicant actually receiving support from one who was under an obligation to give support, * * My Lords, I cannot agree with this view of the true question. I agree that a mere legal right may not, in certain circumstances, be sufficient. It was held insufficient in the case before this House which I have quoted. The long period of desertion by the wife had so qualified it that, as Lord Atkinson pointed out, there was no evidence on which the arbitrator could properly find the fact of dependency.
“Here I think there was evidence on which he could find that fact, and if this be so the finding of fact is conclusive. The true question in the present case is, in my opinion, whether there was, as one of the facts to be taken into account, an effective and valuable legal right. If there was such a right, and there was no legal difficulty in the way of enforcing it, then the mere fact that a want of opportunity to resort to it, which might have proved only tempo*411rary, had reduced the mother and children for the time to living on charity, cannot afford the conclusion that by the father’s death they lost something on which they could depend.
“I wish to add that I have, since the argument, examined the reported authorities. * * * [T]he question is always primarily one of fact, on which the conclusion of the arbitrator ought only to be set aside if it is apparent that there was no evidence to support it, or if error in law appears on the face of it.”
There are cases in this State which give solace to both parties. On the one hand, this Court has stated that there can be no dependency in the absence of actual support. Havre de Grace Fireworks Co. v. Howe, supra; Brooks v. Bethlehem Steel Co., 199 Md. 29, 85 A. 2d 471 (1952) ; Kendall v. Housing Authority, 196 Md. 370, 76 A. 2d 767 (1950). On the other hand, some of the cases speak in terms of whether there was a reasonable probability of support. State Industrial Accident Commission v. Downton, 135 Md. 412, 109 A. 63 (1919), [cited in many cases in other jurisdictions] ; Harvey v. Roche & Son, 148 Md. 363, 129 A. 359 (1925); Meyler v. City of Baltimore, 179 Md. 211, 17 A. 2d 762 (1941). However, all of the cases cited involved different factual situations than exists in the instant case. In some of them, the statements of law were mere dicta. And, in none of the cases—where the worker and the deserted claimants were separated—was there any effort, as in the instant case, to find the worker and compel him to fulfill his legal obligation to support his dependents.
The majority relies principally on the holdings in the Meyler and Brooks cases, and particularly the Howe case, all supra, to support their decision in the present case. All three of those cases are, in my opinion, easily distinguishable from the instant case. In the Meyler case the Court reversed a directed verdict which had held that a forty year old stepdaughter was not dependent upon her stepfather when she took care of her invalid mother and of the stepfather’s home *412and received from him $18.00 a week for herself and the home. The majority relies on language in the Brooks case to defeat a claim of total dependency whereas the instant case in fact involves only partial dependency. It should also be noted that a finding of partial dependency was sustained in the Brooks case. In the Howe case the issue again was total dependency, not partial dependency.
The Industrial Accident Commission found partial dependency. 'The lower court on appeal found total dependency. I think the judgment of the lower court should be affirmed, at least to the extent of awarding Bennie compensation as a partial dependent.