In Anderson v. State, 61 Md. App. 436, 487 A.2d 294, cert. denied, 303 Md. 295, 493 A.2d 349 (1985), the Court considered whether the enactment of the child abuse statute "preempted a particular corner of the field of common law assault and battery and thereby repealed it." Id. at 439. More specifically, the Court defined the issue as "whether the Child Abuse Statute has preempted the field and, therefore, repealed common law assault and battery within a factual situation where one in loco parentis is guilty of using immoderate force in the course of exercising domestic authority over a child." Id. at 448-49. The Court held that the new statute did not preempt the common law of assault and battery. Id. at 449. The Court recognized that the general rule in such instances was that "'no statute is to be construed as altering the common law, further than its words import. It is not to be construed as making any innovation upon the common law which it does not fairly express.'" Id. at 450. The Court then observed that, "in enacting, and subsequently amending, the Child Abuse Statute, the Legislature has never, even obliquely, intimated any intention of repealing or replacing common law assault and battery." Anderson, 61 Md. App. at 452. The Court concluded that in enacting the statutory offense of child abuse, "the direction from the common law to the statutory crime is unmistakably upward." Anderson, 61 Md. App. at 456. Further, "when the Legislature singles out conduct which is directly, or in significant measure, an aggravated form of already proscribed behavior, the direction is upward in terms of harshness." Id. Although the Court recognized the "strange anomaly created by the open-ended nature of the common law punishment for simple assault," that enactment of the statutory assaults, "with significant maximum penalties provided, are clearly intended to deal more harshly with the aggravated form of the crime." Id. Accordingly, "when the obvious legislative intent is to deal more harshly with aggravated forms of already criminal behavior, there is no inherent incompatibility between the greater and lesser crimes; there is no preempting of the field and no repeal of the lesser, common law crime." Id. at 457. The Court further explained: Where the direction of the law is by way of ameliorating its former harshness, we do not permit arbitrary fact finding or arbitrary charging decisions to avoid that intended amelioration. Where, however, the direction of the law is by way of making available harsher treatment, we do permit possibly arbitrary fact finding and possibly arbitrary charging decisions to avoid the available, but not compelled, harsher treatment. The prohibition against arbitrary charging decisions and arbitrary verdicts is one-directional. We provide a ceiling, but not a floor. Id.