What is Wrong with Maine's Occupational Disease Law?

By enacting occupational disease laws, state legislatures stepped ahead of limited medical knowledge concerning the etiology of disease. Responding to public and political pressures, legislatures placed the responsibility for adjudicating claims based on disease on administrators whose procedural and evidentiary systems were designed for claims due to injuries. But the causal connection of disease to employment is not so easily shown; until quite recently, diseases were not thought to support the common law causes of action that gave rise to the quid pro quo of workers' compensation systems. This Comment first sketches the development of Workers' Compensation law and its extension of coverage to occupational disease. Following a brief legislative history of Maine's occupational disease law and a discussion of the law's application by the Law Court, this Comment demonstrates how and why the law fails to compensate adequately victims of industrial disease for disabilities related to employment.