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Maryland has a Workers' Compensation Act along with a long
line of employment law cases that govern claims and defenses in workers
compensation matters. The Maryland Court of Appeals recently considered
whether a worker's compensation claim would be denied because the
accidental injury did not occur from an "unusual activity."
There had been a long line of cases in Maryland that required a showing
>that the worker's injury resulted from an "unusual activity."
>Specifically, an injured worker had the burden of proving: accidental
>injury; that the accidental injury occurred during the course of employment;
and, that the accidental injury arose out of an "unusual activity."
The Court of Appeals in Harris v. Board of Education of Howard County,
removed the "unusual activity" requirement. The Court, in reaching its
decision, found that the "unusual activity" line of cases imposed an
additional requirement on workers' compensation claimants that was not
set forth in the Workers' Compensation Act and so it eliminated the
requirement. In reviewing the case law, the Court also found that the
"unusual activity" requirement had not been consistently applied nor uniformly
followed, was in the distinct minority view in the nation, and contravened the
liberal purposes of the Workers' Compensation Act and therefore should be
abandoned.
The implications of the Harris decision may prove to be far
reaching. Although the Court of Appeals has previously awarded
compensation for accidental injuries incurred in the course of
work-related activities which were not "unusual", there is no doubt that
the Court's abandonment of the "unusual activity" standard will lead to
a proliferation of employment compensation claims. The decision clearly
opens the door to claims for repetitive motion and repeated activity
>injuries that are not the result of an "unusual activity," but the result of job prform
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