Title: Shipmon v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
LEMUEL SHIPMON, 
 
Appellant Below, 
Appellant, 
 
v. 
 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
Appellee Below,  
Appellee. 
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No.  261, 2021 
 
Court Below—Superior Court 
of the State of Delaware 
 
C.A. No. N20A-01-007 
Submitted:  February 2, 2022 
Decided:  April 1, 2022 
 
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA, and VAUGHN, Justices.  
O R D E R 
Upon consideration of the parties’ briefs and the record on appeal, it appears 
that: 
(1) 
The Appellant, Lemuel Shipmon, appeals from a judgment of the 
Superior Court affirming a decision of the Industrial Accident Board (the “Board”).  
The Board’s decision denied his Petition to Determine Additional Compensation 
Due.  He makes two arguments on appeal.  First, he argues that the Board erred by 
failing to award him “permanent partial impairment after determining that he 
suffered permanent limited function.”1  Second, he argues that the Board’s decision 
 
1 Corrected Opening Br. at 9-12.  
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is not supported by substantial evidence.  For the reasons that follow, we have 
concluded that the Superior Court’s judgment should be affirmed. 
(2) 
On August 3, 2017, Shipmon suffered an injury when he fell off a stool 
while employed as a constable at Delaware Technical Community College (the 
“Employer”).  He claims that as a result of that incident, he injured his right hand, 
left elbow, cervical spine, and lumbar spine, and now suffers a 22% permanent 
impairment to his cervical spine. 
(3) 
Shipmon filed a Petition to Determine Additional Compensation Due 
with the Board based upon his claim of a 22% permanent impairment to his cervical 
spine.  The claim was based upon the medical opinions of Dr. Stephen Rodgers, who 
is board certified in occupational and preventative medicine.  Dr. Rodgers is also 
certified in the use of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment 
(the “AMA Guides”).  In arriving at his opinion, Dr. Rodgers relied upon DRE 
(Diagnose-Related Estimate) Table 15-5 in the fifth edition of the AMA Guides.  
Table 15-5 has five Categories.  Excluding Category I, each Category includes a 
range of permanent impairment to account for the resolution or continuation of 
symptoms and their impact on the performance of daily activities.  The rater places 
the patient in a Category based on clinical judgment and on a level of function helped 
by the history and by standardized forms.  Dr. Rodgers’s evaluation placed Shipmon 
in Category III.  Category III contains a range of 15% to 18% permanent impairment 
3 
 
to the whole person.  He then applied a 0.75 conversion factor to arrive at his 
conclusion that there was a 22% permanent impairment of the cervical spine.   
(4) 
At a hearing before the Board on October 24, 2019, the Employer 
presented the testimony of Dr. Stephen Fedder—a board certified neurosurgeon.  Dr. 
Fedder examined Shipmon on January 30, 2018, and June 26, 2019.  He testified 
that the cervical spine aspect of Shipmon’s work-related injury had resolved itself 
by the time of his first examination and Shipmon had not sustained any permanent 
impairment of his neck as a result of the work accident.  Dr. Fedder did not take 
issue with Dr. Rodgers’s use of Table 15-5 or the application of the DRE method.  
He did testify, however, that based on his examination, Shipmon did not meet any 
of the criteria of Category III. 
(5) 
The Board found that Dr. Rodgers’s testimony was not credible.  In so 
finding, the Board took into account a number of factors, including the following.  
Dr. Rodgers relied in part upon an MRI that predated the work injury, but he did not 
compare the MRI that predated the work injury with one that was done after the 
work injury.  In fact, he did not discuss the second MRI at all in his testimony.  Dr. 
Fedder, by contrast, testified that there was no significant difference between the two 
MRIs.  Dr. Kennedy Yalamanchili, a neurosurgeon that Shipmon was referred to by 
his primary care doctor, testified that any progression between the two MRIs was 
based on the natural history of degenerative disease, not trauma.   
4 
 
Another factor considered by the Board in assessing Dr. Rodgers’s credibility 
was that Category III applies to a patient with significant signs of radiculopathy, 
such as pain and/or sensory loss, in a dermatomal distribution, loss of relevant 
reflexes, loss of muscle strength, or unilateral atrophy.  The neurologic impairment 
may be verified by electrodiagnostic findings.  Dr. Rodgers admitted, however, that 
Shipmon did not have any documented loss of muscle strength or unilateral atrophy.  
Another factor contemplated by the Board related to a pinched nerve in Shipmon’s 
neck.  Shipmon has a preexisting pinched nerve in his neck, but Dr. Rodgers showed 
no concern about the pinched nerve.  Dr. Rodgers was also unwilling to consider 
placing Shipmon in a less severe Category.  For these reasons, the Board rejected 
Dr. Rodgers’s permanent impairment rating, finding that “[t]he reasons supporting 
his ratings are questionable and his actual rating appears to greatly overstate the 
degree of permanent impairment related to the work accident.”2  The Board then 
denied Shipmon’s petition. 
(6) 
Shipmon appealed to the Superior Court, which affirmed the Board’s 
decision. 
(7) 
Generally, this Court’s review of an Industrial Accident Board decision 
is “limited to a determination of whether there is substantial evidence to support the 
 
2 Corrected Opening Br. Ex. B at 19.  
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Board’s findings.”3  “Substantial evidence means such relevant evidence as a 
reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.”4  On appeal, 
errors of law are reviewed de novo.5 
(8) 
Shipmon’s first contention is that the Board erred by failing to award 
him “permanent partial impairment after determining that he suffered permanent 
limited function.”6  This argument is based upon the following statements made by 
the Board in its decision: “The Board found Claimant highly credible.  He appears 
to have permanent limited function but minimally. . . . The Board accepts Claimant’s 
testimony that as a result of the work-related neck injury, he has had to modify his 
body mechanics to some degree.”7  These findings, Shipmon argues, require some 
award for permanent partial impairment under 19 Del. C. § 2326(g), which provides, 
in pertinent part, that “[t]he Board shall award proper and equitable compensation  
for the loss of . . . or loss of use of  any member or part of the body.”  The Board 
rejected this argument by finding that “it is not only Claimant’s burden of proving 
he is permanently impaired as a result of the work accident, but he has the burden of 
proving his permanent impairment is the degree he alleges as a result of the work 
 
3 Betts v. Townsends, Inc., 765 A.2d 531, 533 (Del. 2000). 
4 Oceanport Indus., Inc. v. Wilmington Stevedores, Inc., 636 A.2d 892, 899 (Del. 1994) (internal 
quotation marks omitted).  
5 Arrants v. Home Depot, 65 A.3d 601, 605 (Del. 2013).  
6 Corrected Opening Br. at 9-12. 
7 Corrected Opening Br. Ex. B at 17.  
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accident – twenty-two percent.”8 
(9) 
Shipmon relies, in part, on this Court’s decision in Turbitt v. Blue Hen 
Lines, Inc., wherein we stated, “[i]t is the duty of the Board, not a physician, to fix a 
percentage to a claimant’s disability based on the evidence before it.”9  In that case, 
the only medical testimony was from a doctor who testified that the claimant had a 
34% permanent partial impairment of the spine.10  The Board, “relying primarily on 
its own experience in these matters”11 rejected the doctor’s testimony and found that 
the claimant’s permanent partial impairment was 15%.  We reversed, reasoning that 
“[w]hatever ‘institutional experience’ or administrative expertise the Board 
possesses may be used as a tool for evaluating evidence but not a source for creating 
evidence.”12  The case does not support Shipmon’s proposition that the Board may 
assign a specific degree of permanent partial impairment based upon its own 
institutional experience in the absence of any evidence in the record to support such 
a finding. 
(10) Shipmon also relies, in part, on the Superior Court’s decision in Butler 
v. Ryder M.L.S., in which the court explained that the Board is responsible for 
“assign[ing] a percentage to the [claimant’s] disability.”13  In that case, Dr. Rodgers 
 
8 Id. at 17-18. 
9 711 A.2d 1214, 1215 (Del. 1998). 
10 Id. 
11 Id. 
12 Id. at 1216. 
13 1999 WL 167734, at *2 (Del. Super. Feb. 1, 1999). 
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testified that the claimant had a 20% permanent partial impairment to her lower right 
extremity.14  He based his opinion on the AMA Guides, and in making his 
determination, considered the claimant’s meniscectomy, mild arthritis, and 
chondromalacia.15  Dr. Case testified that the claimant had a 9% permanency rating 
for all her injuries.16  The Board found the testimony of Dr. Rodgers to be more 
credible than the testimony of Dr. Case, but also found that no assignment of 
impairment should be given based on the chondromalacia because it was no longer 
specifically mentioned in the most recent edition of the AMA Guides.17  The claimant 
complained that the Board should “not have simply deferred to the AMA Guides.”18  
From the Board’s analysis, it appears that the Board’s decision to award a 14% 
impairment was based upon the AMA Guides after removing the chondromalacia 
from consideration.  It does not appear that the Board arbitrarily decided on an 
impairment rating or based a rating on its “institutional experience,”19 with no 
evidence in the record to support its decision.  This case does not help Shipmon. 
(11) The Board is not required to, and should not, make a determination that 
a permanent partial impairment is of a certain degree when there is no evidence in 
the record to support that finding.  Shipmon’s first argument is therefore rejected. 
 
14 Id. at *1.  
15 Id. 
16 Id. 
17 Id. 
18 Id. 
19 Turbitt v. Blue Hen Lines, Inc., 711 A.2d 1214, 1216 (Del. 1998). 
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(12) Shipmon’s second contention is that the Board’s decision is not 
supported by substantial evidence.  The gist of this argument is that the there is not 
substantial evidence to support the Board’s finding that Dr. Rodgers’s medical 
opinions were not credible.  However, the Board explained in some detail the 
evidentiary basis upon which it concluded that his medical opinions were not 
credible.  The evidentiary factors the Board considered are summarized above.  The 
testimony of Dr. Fedder and Dr. Yalamanchili provides substantial evidence to 
support the Board’s denial of Shipmon’s petition. 
NOW, THEREFORE, it is the order of the Court that the judgment of the 
Superior Court is affirmed. 
BY THE COURT: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/  James T. Vaughn, Jr. 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice