Court Opinion

ID: 9768133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:43:52.23692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:36.834664
License: Public Domain

Wendell L. Griffen, Judge, dissenting. I dissent from the result announced in the majority opinion because I believe that the Workers’ Compensation Commission’s decision denying benefits in this case should be reversed and remanded. The Commission misapplied the temporal element of the accidental-injury standard of proof when it adopted the employer’s contention that appellant faded to prove a specific incident identifiable by time and place of occurrence, because she could not specify the precise date and time that the injury occurred. The Commission’s construction of the temporal element of the accidental-injury burden of proof is inconsistent with past decisions, and it is unnecessarily restrictive. It has long been the law in Arkansas that injured workers are not required to make inescapable proof that an accidental injury occurred on a date certain. A reasonably definite time is all that is required. W. Shanhouse & Sons, Inc. v. Sims, 224 Ark. 86, 272 S.W.2d 68 (1954); Murich-Jarvis Company, Inc. v. Townsend, 209 Ark. 956, 193 S.W.2d 310 (1946); Marcoe v. Bell International, 48 Ark. App. 33, 888 S.W.2d 663 (1994). Appellant testified about where she was when injured, and she testified that her injury occurred during the first two weeks of July 1993, before the plant took its vacation. That testimony was sufficient to establish “a certain fixed and definite event or occurrence from which time can be calculated.” Murich-Jarvis Co., Inc., 209 Ark. at 962. Judging from the fact that the employer paid for appellant’s initial medical treatment based on her supervisor’s referral in October, the employer appears to have reached the same conclusion in the first instance, but changed its position and denied appellant’s claim after appellant’s bone scan revealed that she had a fracture. The statutory definition of an “accidental injury” found at Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-102(5)(A)(i) (Repl. 1996), does require a worker to prove a specific incident and identify the incident by time and place of occurrence in order to establish a compensable accidental injury. I agree that whether appellant met her burden of proof based upon the correct standard was an issue for the Commission to determine as trier of fact. However, the Commission construed the requirement contained in § 11-9-102(5) (A) (i) to require evidence to the minute and hour on a date certain concerning appellant’s injury. Both the language of the statute and the case law that existed long before its enactment do not support this interpretation. Therefore, I respectfully dissent. Crabtree, J., joins in this dissent.