Tennessee: Worker’s “Restraint” of Patient Was Not Willful Misconduct

Applying the 4-part test described in Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 34.01, et seq., a Tennessee appellate court affirmed a state trial court’s determination that an employer failed to show that one of its healthcare workers willfully violated the employer’s physical restraint policy in interacting with a resident at the employer’s therapeutic residential treatment facility. While the worker acknowledged that he knew about the employer’s policy that residents were to be free from restraint, the court held that the employer had failed to prove the fourth element of the Larsontest: that the employee’s action was more than a mere error in judgment, negligence, or even recklessness.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Tennessee Clinical Sch., LLC v. Johns, 2019 Tenn. LEXIS 295 (Aug. 2, 1019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 34.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see