Ash v. General Motors Corp., 0208 MIWC, 2008-23
| Case Date | February 01, 2008 |
| Court | Michigan |
1. The parties are subject to the Michigan compensation laws on the dates of injury alleged.
2. The defendant was self-insured.
3. Plaintiff was in the employ of defendant on the date of injury alleged.
4. Notice was given and claim made according to statute.
5. The gross wage is $867.00 for the alleged dates of injury.
6. There is no dual employment.ISSUES:
1. Whether plaintiff met with personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment on or about the dates alleged,
2. Whether a disability resulted from the alleged injury.
3. Whether a wage loss has been incurred, and if so, the term and amount of compensation to be paid as a result.
4. Plaintiff’s entitlement to medical expenses and treatment.
5. Whether any benefits were paid or furnished for which coordination or offset would be appropriate under Section 354 or 358.
6. Back Rules.SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE CLINTON SCOTT ASH, plaintiff, lives in Grand Blanc and was born in XXX. He graduated from Goodrich High School in 1970 and went to college at “Flint Juco,” Central Michigan, and the University of Michigan at Flint. He took various classes in pre-med and economics and business. He began his work at GM in 1976. Before going to GM he ran a family business, a grocery store. He did meat cutting, produce work and just about everything imaginable. It was a small store, with two checkout stands, in Burton Michigan. He left when it was sold. He was a co-owner and it is difficult to assess his earnings. He did get free groceries. He took a company physical for GM and went to work at Grand Blanc as a conveyor attendant. His job was to put parts into containers from the line. Plaintiff’s last job was a checker/inspector and he was located on the shipping dock. There was a brick wall separating this area from the plant. He got that job from being exposed to smoke in the plant itself, and this job was to get him away from the manufacturing area. There was a previous trial and Mr. Ash received compensation for a defined period of time he was off. This apparently involved somewhat different injuries and issues. He started doing the inspector checker job in the early 1990s. In his scheduler/checker job he did some scheduling of the arrival of the parts at the area they were needed. They manufactured pressed steel parts for GM cars at this plant. They shipped these to several plants, including facilities in Mexico and overseas. There were seven or eight people doing this job, and about four ordinarily worked on a shift. The scheduler checkers would look at a computer and get the customer’s requirements at the time, then break that down into their standard shipping methods, and then they would figure out how to get these there by truck or rail, so that they would arrive in time and not cause a plant shutdown. They had some “just in time” plants that were just hours away from Grand Blanc and they would ship the parts to arrive hours ahead of the need at those plants. Plaintiff normally did the drive dock checker job. These were all “just in time” orders that went to plants that only kept on hand a four hour supply of the parts. He had to generate an immediate report at 7 a.m. and that would tell people how much they had on hand and whether they would have to transfer people to other operations to get parts that would be needed that day. This report had to be on time because there might be people to be shifted and some die setting done. Plaintiff examined exhibit 4 which is a job description of the checker/scheduler job and he says it is accurate and that there are five different jobs all together. Plaintiff had a heart attack at work on a Thursday in 1996. He had worked about 20 hours a day that week before having the heart attack. He was off maybe 5 months. He came back to the same job. He came back with a 40 hour restriction. His job previously had been a straight ten hour a day job. Even though they took him back, he still had ten hours of work a day to do. Plaintiff had been parking near his office, and a couple of years before he left he was told by management that he couldn’t park there any more. He got a doctor note, but they then said he had to get a handicap parking permit, which he didn’t want to do. He ended up in regular employee parking which was a ¼ mile walk for him. This made it tough, especially when it was very hot or very cold, and the walk wore him out. Plaintiff moved from one area to another because the plant was putting too much on his crew, so he moved from trucks to the box car operations. Plaintiff says that some days the other checkers would load 3 to 6 trucks, and he would be loading 25 or more, and the truckers blamed him for putting too much work on them. When he went to loading box cars the same thing happened, meaning that he was putting out more work than the others. The last few years he was not sleeping or eating right. He had abdominal pain and “bathroom” issues. He was in pain and reported this to his doctor. His doctors treated him by sending him to specialists, giving him different medications. Since he had to go to the bathroom a lot due to diarrhea, he sometimes had problems getting this initial production report out at 7:00 a.m. This caused him to lose a lot of weight and not be able to sleep. He lost 90 pounds. He threw up lot and would have accidents with his bowels a lot. One doctor sent him to Dr. Nuttaki, a psychiatrist. In 2001 plaintiff went out on sick leave. When he came back they told him he would have to take a split shift and would do the jobs of those who were on vacation or absent. This was difficult because the hours were irregular, sometimes starting at 4 a.m., sometimes 4 p.m., and the job duties were all different too. Sometimes he was working the gap between the first and second shifts as well. This cut out some overtime for the other checkers and they blamed him for losing their hours. Since he had to do their jobs when they were gone, they didn’t leave him a good setup to work on when they were away. When he left work the plaintiff barely had the strength to walk out of the plant. His lungs are not well. He uses oxygen sometimes. Oxygen was prescribed by physicians at Genesys and late by his family doctor. Plaintiff is on T & P disability and has social security disability as well. He cannot go back to GM. CROSS-EXAMINATION: Plaintiff says he is on oxygen now but was not when he last worked at GM. He thinks about 3 years elapsed from when he left work until he started the oxygen. He still smokes, but maybe only a pack a week. He was not smoking in 2002 on his last day of work. He was smoking in 1996 when he had his heart attack, and also when he had his disagreement about the parking. Plaintiff eventually got a handicapper sticker from the state, probably around when GM told him he needed it. He was smoking when he got it. He smoked during his inspector job, in the plant and at home and even after his problem with the fumes in 1983. He kept smoking after his heart attack. He even kept smoking after he filed this petition, and even...
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