Unusual Decision on "Unusual Activity", June 19, 2003
by Thomas A. Bowden
In an unusual judicial about-face, Maryland's highest court admitted that it had erred in engrafting an "unusual activity" requirement onto the state's worker's compensation law. In various decisions, the court had ruled that employees could not recover under the statute unless they were engaged in an "unusual activity" when they were injured.
The claimant in the case injured her back while lifting a box, an activity that was a normal part of her job. When the employee obtained an award that was affirmed by two lower courts, the employer appealed, giving the Court of Appeals an opportunity to revisit, and overturn, its "unusual activity" standard, which it acknowledged was a minority view.
Interpreted properly, the court ruled, it is only the injury that must be unusual, i.e., accidental, not the activity in which the employee was engaging when injured. The "unusual activity" standard had no basis in the language of the statute.
Harris v. Board of Educ. of Howard County, No. 43, Sept. Term 2002, Court of Appeals (June 6, 2003).
Court OK's Discharge for Stars and Bars on Tool Box, June 3, 2003
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Court has affirmed the firing of an employee who refused to remove the Confederate flag from his tool box, after his employer received complaints from an African-American co-worker. Dixon v. Coburg Dairy Inc., No. 02-1266 (4th Cir. May 30, 2003). The case presented the Court with "a difficult question as to where the outer limit of an individual's right to political expression might lie."
Dixon was a mechanic who maintained the company's delivery trucks, and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Following the heated political debate over whether the Confederate flag should be permitted to fly over the South Carolina State House, Dixon pasted a number of Confederate flag stickers on his tool box. A black employee complained about the flags, and the company asked Dixon to take them off – and even offered to buy him a new tool box for use at work. Dixon refused and was fired.
Dixon sued for wrongful discharge under South Carolina law, but the Federal Court took jurisdiction because of the First Amendment implications. The trial court dismissed the case, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed, holding that "Dixon's First Amendment right does not extend to bringing the Confederate flag inside his employer's privately owned workplace."
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