Alabama: Unscheduled Award Found Appropriate for Worker With Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

Quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, and finding that in addition to an impairment to a worker’s arm, he also suffered from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, an Alabama court said it was error to limit the worker’s recovery to a 59 percent loss of the upper extremity. Noting that the treating physician had opined that the worker sustained a 59 percent loss of use to his arm, the physician also noted pain in the worker’s neck and the CRPS condition. It was improper, said the Court, under this scenario, to limit the worker to a scheduled award. The case was remanded to determine the full measure of the worker’s impairment.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Turner v. Robert J. Baggett, Inc., 2021 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 7 (Feb. 5, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 87.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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