The Appellate Court

01/25/2024

 The Appellate Court of Maryland affirms dismissal of wrongful death suit holding that the Worker's Compensation Act is the exclusive remedy for non-dependent tort actions. 

Summer Ledford v. Jenway Contracting, Inc.

Appellate Court of Maryland, filed. November 30, 2023
(Wright, J.)

        In
Ledford v. Jenway Contracting, the Appellate Court of Maryland
considered whether the Worker’s Compensation Act barred a non-dependent from
bringing a wrongful death tort action against the decedent’s employer.
Ultimately, the Appellate Court held that the Act barred the non-dependent’s
tort action and affirmed the Circuit Court’s dismissal of the wrongful death suit.

        The
case arose from the appellant’s late father’s tragic death that occurred while
he was working for the Appellee. It was undisputed that the father’s death
“arose out of and in the course of his employment.” The Appellant, the
decedent’s forty-seven-year-old daughter, had no right to benefits under the
Worker’s Compensation Act as she was not a dependent of her late father. She
filed a wrongful death negligence action against the appellee-employer in the
Circuit Court for Baltimore County. The employer thereafter moved to dismiss
the action, contending that the Appellant had no viable tort action
against the employer because the Worker’s Compensation Act provided the
“exclusive” remedy for damages stemming from her decedent-father’s work-related
injury.  The Circuit Court agreed and
dismissed the Appellant’s action for failure to state a claim.

        On
Appeal, the Appellate Court of Maryland traced the history of the Worker’s
Compensation Act, enacted in 1914. Prior to the Worker’s Compensation Act, the
worker could sue the employer for negligence and the employer could likewise
assert defenses such as contributory negligence and assumption of the
risk.  The Act’s passage reflected a
“compromise between employees’ rights to pursue common law and other statutory
damages for their injuries, and the burden to employers of having to provide
workers’ compensation benefits.” See Hauch v. Connor, 295 Md. 120, 127
(1983)). Under the Act, the employer is required to pay, regardless of fault.
In exchange, the employer is shielded from common law liability as the Act is
the exclusive remedy for injured employees and their dependents, also referred
to as the “exclusivity provision.” There are two exceptions to the exclusivity
provision: 1) where an employer fails to provide compensation in accordance
with the Act and 2) where an employer deliberately injures or kills a covered
employee. Neither exception applied to the circumstances before the Ledford
court.

        While
acknowledging that neither Maryland appellate court has encountered the precise
issue (whether the exclusivity provision applies to a non-dependent), the Ledford
court recognized that Maryland’s appellate courts have considered “whether a
wrongful death plaintiff is permitted to bring a wrongful death claim when a
covered employee is killed in the course of his or her employment.” The court
cited two examples, Koche v. Cox and Austin v. Thrifty Diversified,
Inc., both standing for the proposition that, where an injury arises out of
or in the course of employment, the sole remedy is the Worker’s Compensation
Act. Applying these cases and the language of the Act to the Appellant’s
circumstances, the court concluded that the appellee-employer’s liability was
“exclusively within the worker’s compensation act” and further reasoned that
when a covered employee is injured or killed in the course of his or her
employment, the employer’s liability and any recovery resulting from that
liability is exclusive to the Act, regardless of whether an otherwise proper
wrongful death plaintiff is entitled to benefits under the Act.” (emphasis
added).

-Joseph Kavanaugh, Associate