Hodgson v. Flippo Construction Co.9/15/2005
gular," declared the Court, "and each of the other locations to which the employment has a relationship." Id. " t is not," the Court stressed, "the whole of the employment outside the State that is considered," but "only that in some other State that surpasses `casual.'" Id. Quoting Professor Larson for the last time, it repeated his admonition that "`a status rooted in the local state'" is lost only when an employee's "`regular employment becomes centralized and fixed so clearly in another state that any return to the original state would itself be casual, incidental, and temporary by comparison.'" Id. at 594-95. That did not occur, the Court found, in Pohopek. Id. at 595.
While Pohopek's "employment activity outside of the State dwarfs the amount in State," his presence in none of the locations outside of the State, the Court observed, "is substantially greater than in Maryland." Id. at 594. Having thus narrowed the focus of comparison, the Court concluded that, in contrast to the work he performed in Maryland, Pohopek's "employment activity" in the other states, "in which he ma deliveries and pick-ups," was "`casual, occasional or incidental.'" Id. at 595. And that unlocked the door to coverage under L.E. § 9-203(a)(2).
As noted earlier, construction work, like trucking, is a transitory type of employment; thus Hodgson, like Pohopek, belonged to "a unique class of employee whose activity, by its very nature, is transient." Larson, supra § 143.04 . Consequently, we must determine whether Hodgson's employment was, as he contends, initially "rooted" in Maryland and, if so, whether his regular employment thereafter became "centralized and fixed so clearly" in the District of Columbia that "any return to [Maryland] would itself be only casual, incidental, and temporary by comparison." Id.
Unfortunately, there is no formula or algorithm upon which we can rely in making that determination. Each case must be decided upon the facts it presents. Under the facts of this case, we are persuaded that Hodgson's employment, though initially rooted in Maryland, became "fixed and centralized" in the District of Columbia over the three-year-period leading up to his accident. Indeed, unlike in Pohopek, where the claimant's presence in none of the other jurisdictions was "substantially greater than in Maryland," Pohopek, 375 Md. at 594, appellant's presence was "substantially greater" in the District of Columbia for the last three years of his employment than it was in Maryland.
Appellant was hired in Maryland by a Maryland-based company. And, for the first three years of his employment with Flippo, he worked almost exclusively in Maryland. His employment was, to be sure, initially "rooted" in Maryland, as he maintains. But that came to an end in 1999, when he was reassigned to work chiefly at D.C. job sites. For the next three years, leading up to his injury at the end of 2001, he worked principally in the District of Columbia. In his brief, he acknowledges that in 1999 he was "primarily" assigned to D.C. job sites, and that in 2000 his job sites were "almost exclusively in Washington, D.C."
In 2001, the year preceding his injury, his employment records show, and the circuit court found, that he worked 60.29% of his "fixed job site" time in D.C., while he only spent 20.75% of his "fixed job site" time in Maryland. Moreover, his trips to Maryland to pick up supplies and pay roll documents for his D.C. job sites and his attendance at classes and meetings held at Flippo's Maryland headquarters, were merely "incidental" or "secondary" to his employment in D.C. See Webster's New World Dictionary (2d College ed. 1984)(defining "incidental" as "happening as a result of or in con
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