Court Opinion

ID: 9748837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:15:04.05151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:29.635807
License: Public Domain

Layton Roaf, Judge, dissenting. I would reverse this case. The issue before us involves only the award of temporary total disability (TTD) benefits for a scheduled leg injury that occurred in 2000. While it is undisputed that appellee Sidney Biles suffered a compensable injury, I do not believe he has met the standard set forth in Wheeler Constr. Co. v. Armstrong, 73 Ark. App. 146, 41 S.W.3d 822 (2001), where a “scheduled” injury is involved, the case specifically relied on by both the Commission and by appellant in its argument for reversal. Wheeler provides that entitlement to TTD benefits continues as long as the claimant is within his healing period, or he has not returned to work, ivhichever first occurs. Here, Biles 1) returned to work after his injury; 2) continued to work for six months until he was apparently terminated by Farmers Cooperative (as reflected in the ALJ’s opinion) for “alleged misconduct” (as recited in the Commission’s opinion),1 and 3) was fully performing his job prior to his termination. However, in WIteeler, the claimant never returned to work at all before he was terminated for having become incarcerated; he “returned” to the workforce nine months later when he began working in the prison as a sewing machine operator. Wheeler’s case was thus reversed for an award of TTD benefits during those nine months. In Biles’s case, while he is clearly entitled to further medical treatment, Wheeler does not support the finding by the Commission that he is entitled to TTD benefits. Biles surely did not experience an “unsuccessful attempt to return to the workforce,” as asserted in the majority opinion; neither did the claimant in Roberson v. Waste Management, 58 Ark. App. 11, 944 S.W.2d 858 (1997), the case the majority cites for this proposition. The Commission denied TTD benefits to Roberson because her healing period had ended, and this court affirmed. I do not take issue with the Commission’s finding in the instant case that Biles remained in his healing period; it is their finding that Biles “has yet to return to work” that is not supported by the evidence in this case. Moreover, the majority and concurring judges apparently worry that denying TTD benefits to an employee who continues working despite a failure to receive medical treatment for a com-pensable injury will somehow encourage employers to withhold medical treatment in order to “coerce” an employee to abandon a potential TTD claim. However, the fact remains that Biles did work continuously after his injury. By the strained interpretation of “returned to work” adopted by the majority, it is employers who should now be fearful of initially contesting the compen-sability of an employee’s injury, as they will be obligated for additional, oftentimes undeserved TTD benefits where the employee continues to work, because there is no requirement that the employee demonstrate through medical evidence that he would have or should have been kept off work for a time. Certainly, Biles, who had the burden of establishing entitlement to TTD benefits, could have sought such an opinion from his physician. As a final matter, although the parties and the Commission have treated Biles’s leg injury as a scheduled injury throughout these proceedings, it is unclear from our workers’ compensation statutory scheme when a mere injury to a limb is to be treated as a scheduled injury. Arkansas Code Annotated §§ 11-9-521 (b)(2)(e) and (f) provide that scheduled-injury benefits, absent an amputation, may be awarded only for “permanent total loss of use of a member” or “permanent partial loss of use of a member,” and it remains to be seen at this early stage of Biles’s treatment whether he will be awarded a permanent rating. With a scheduled injury, the claimant need not demonstrate that he is actually incapacitated from earning wages to receive TTD benefits. However, this is not an issue raised by appellant. In any event, Biles continued to work for six months after his injury, first saw a doctor six days after his termination, and, according to his physician’s notes, his condition was “much better” one month later. I would reverse.   There is no evidence in appellant’s abstract concerning the termination or the reasons for it other than Biles’s cryptic testimony, “They never told me I was fired. They just told me to go file my papers, and I left.”