Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission v. O'Donnell

• Decision Date: 02 December 1955
• Docket Number: No. 37,37
• Citation: 208 Md. 370,118 A.2d 674
• Parties: WASHINGTON SUBURBAN SANITARY COMMISSION, Employer, and Travelers Insurance Company, Insurer, v. Edith O'DONNELL, Claimant.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 370

208 Md. 370

118 A.2d 674

WASHINGTON SUBURBAN SANITARY COMMISSION, Employer, and Travelers Insurance Company, Insurer, v. Edith O'DONNELL, Claimant.

No. 37.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Dec. 2, 1955.

Lansdale G. Sasscer, Jr., Upper Marlboro (Lansdale G. Sasscer, Sasscer, Clagett & Powers, Hal C. B. Clagett and Jerrold V. Powers, Upper Marlboro, on the brief), for appellants.

Vivian V. Simpson, Rockville, and Ralph W. Powers, Hyattsville (Simpson & Simpson, Rockville, and Powers & Gifford, Hyattsville, on the brief), for appellee.

Before BRUNE, C. J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, HENDERSON and HAMMOND, JJ.

HAMMOND, Judge.

The Circuit Court, sitting without a jury, affirmed a finding of the State Industrial Accident Commission that a son was totally dependent upon his father at the time of the accidental injury that resulted in the death of the father. The parties are in agreement that the only question raised by the appeal is whether the court was correct in affirming the finding as to total dependency, the appellants claiming that the record is devoid of evidence legally sufficient to permit such a finding, and the appellee saying that the appellants have not met their burden of showing error and that the evidence clearly affords a basis for the conclusion that the son was wholly dependent on the father.

The testimony showed the following facts. The father and mother were married in 1933. After the marriage, she stopped her work as a registered nurse for some years and then began again on a casual and occasional basis. In May, 1951, she went back to steady work at the Montgomery County General Hospital, where she had worked prior to her marriage. The last time she nursed before that was in 1947, when she took two cases. The son was born in 1934. The father supported the family until May, 1951, when the farm on which he had worked for the last three years was sold, and the family bought a parcel fo land near Ellicott City on which they planned to build a home. From a $5,000 inheritance from her brother, the mother contributed $2,000 of the $2,800 purchase price and the father contributed the balance. The father was a carpenter by trade and it was decided that the most economical and feasible plan would be for him to build the house himself. This, of course, meant that he would earn no income during the time he was thus engaged. The mother testified that it was for this reason, and this reason only, that she went back to work--so that the family could live during the time the house was being built. Her earnings were $155 a month, before taxes, with a $25 a month travel allowance. In April or May of 1952, the house was in condition to live in, some three-quarters finished, and the father went to work for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission as a carpenter at a salary of $122.20 a week. He continued to work on the house on rainy days and on weekends. During the summer of 1952, the son, who was then eighteen, gained employment with the Commission on the project on which his father worked and earned approximately $900. Of this, he saved $400 for his college education, and spent $500 for incidental expenses and the rebuilding and upkeep of his automobile, which had been bought for him by his father and mother. His mother contributed $380 and his father, $200, to the purchase price of the car. On November 26, 1952, the father was fatally injured in the course of his employment. The mother had continued to work and was then still employed by the hosital, although she testified that she had planned to stop work the next month.

During the period from May, 1951 to May, 1952, the family subsisted on the earnings of the mother. From past savings and loans, the father paid for the materials that went into the house. From May, 1952 until November, 1952, the father, as he had done before May, 1951, paid for the family groceries, his son's clothing and school supplies, gave his son spending money and paid his medical and dental bills. The son testified that his father was his sole support. The mother testified that the father was the son's sole support, and when asked whether she contributed to her son's support, said no, that was her husband's job and he did that entirely. After May, 1952, she used her earnings for the expenses of the car in which she travelled to and from work, for the purchase of her clothing, and contributed to the payment of oil and electric bills. She saved three or four hundred dollars of her earnings and, although it is not clear from the record just when she did so, it would seem likely that it must have been in the six months from May to November, 1952, since the living expenses of the family in the year prior to May, 1952, would have consumed all she earned during that period.

The trial court, on this testimony, held that at the time of the father's death, the son '* * * had no consequential source or means of maintenance other than the earnings of his father; which means that the State Industrial Accident Commission was correct in its construction of the law and the facts when it determined that he was totally dependent.'

This Court has recently enunciated the principles which control the case. In Larkin v. Smith, 183 Md. 274, 37 A.2d 340, 343, the Court said the rule was that total dependency exists where the dependent subsists entirely on the earnings of the workman, but that in applying this rule courts have not deprived claimants of the rights of total dependents, when otherwise entitled thereto, on account of temporary gratuitous services rendered them by others, or on account of occasional financial assistance received from other sources, or on account of other minor considerations or benefits which do not substantially modify or change the general rule. It went on to say: 'There is another terminology frequently used and...