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Stressing that injuries are compensable under the Tennessee workers’ compensation laws, the work-related accident must not only be the legal cause of the injury, it must also be the medical cause as well. Accordingly, where five physicians concluded that a worker’s neck surgeries were unnecessary to treat a work-related accident, but were necessary to treat the worker’s preexisting conditions, the Commission did not err in denying the employee’s claim. Claimant, a university employee, developed upper back and right arm pain and numbness, tingling, and weakness in her right hand after helping a student move eight heavy oak tables at work. The pain continued for some time. Several physicians indicated that she required surgery, not due to her work-related injury, but to preexisting degenerative disc and facet disease. Claimant contended it did not matter that the work-related accident caused a temporary aggravation, that she was entitled to lifetime medical treatment for the injury, not merely temporary treatment. The court disagreed, noting that the medical-cause prong required claimant to prove the disability was medically the result of an exertion or injury that occurred during a work-related activity. The court noted that a three-doctor medical panel appointed by the ALJ determined that the accident caused “at most” a cervical spine "strain/sprain resulting in temporary aggravation of claimant’s pre-existing degenerative cervical spine disease. The panel further concluded that the condition stabilized within a relatively short period of time.
Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).
LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.
See Petersen v. Labor Comm’n, 2016 UT App 222, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 233 (Nov. 3, 2016)
See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.02.
Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law