Barker, 052020 ARWC, G902244
| Case Date | May 20, 2020 |
| Court | Arkansas |
1. The Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission has jurisdiction over this claim.
2. The employee/self-insured employer/third-party administrator relationship existed at all relevant times hereto.
3. This claim has been controverted in its entirety.
4. Claimant’s average weekly wage of $806.42 entitles him to compensation rates of $538.00/$404.00.Issues At the hearing, the parties discussed the issues set forth in Commission Exhibit 1. With an amendment of the first, they read as follows:
1. Whether Claimant sustained a compensable injury to his right upper extremity—including the wrist—by specific incident.
2. Whether Claimant is entitled to reasonable and necessary medical treatment.
3. Whether Claimant is entitled to temporary total disability benefits.
4. Whether Claimant is entitled to a controverted attorney’s fee. All other issues have been reserved.Contentions The respective contentions of the parties, following an amendment by Respondents, read as follows: Claimant:
1. The claimant, Ronald Barker, sustained a compensable upper body injury on March 6, 2019 while working at International Paper Company in Russellville, Arkansas.
2. The claimant’s injuries are proven by objective medical findings on an MRI taken on March 28, 2019.
3. For reasons unknown to the claimant, Respondents ceased authorizing medical treatment.
4. The claimant is no longer working and is still under medical restrictions for a scheduled injury. Therefore, he is entitled to temporary total disability benefits.
5. As rights to benefits have been controverted, the claimant is requesting the Commission award an attorney’s fee in the matter.
6. Claimant reserves the right to raise additional contentions at the hearing of this matter.Respondents: 1. Claimant did not sustain a compensable injury while employed with Respondents, or he cannot carry his burden of proving that he sustained a compensable injury within the meaning of Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-102(4) (Repl. 2012). Claimant cannot carry his burden of proving any injury was caused by his work or an incident at work. FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW After reviewing the record as a whole, including medical reports, documents, and other matters properly before the Commission, and having had an opportunity to hear the testimony of the witnesses and to observe their demeanor, I hereby make the following findings of fact and conclusions of law in accordance with Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-704 (Repl. 2012):
1. The Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission has jurisdiction over this claim.
2. The stipulations set forth above are reasonable and are hereby accepted.
3. Claimant has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that he sustained a compensable injury to his right upper extremity by specific incident.
4. Claimant has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that he is entitled to reasonable and necessary treatment of his compensable right upper extremity injury.
5. Claimant has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that all of the treatment of his compensable right upper extremity injury that is in evidence was reasonable and necessary.
6. Claimant has not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that he is entitled to temporary total disability benefits for any period of time.
7. Claimant has not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that he is entitled to a controverted attorney’s fee under Ark. Code Ann. § 11-9-715 (Repl. 2012).ADJUDICATION Summary of Evidence The hearing witnesses were Claimant and Bart Elliot Rash. Along with the prehearing order discussed above, the other exhibits admitted into evidence in this case were Claimant’s Exhibit 1, a compilation of his medical records, consisting of three index pages and 45 numbered pages thereafter; Claimant’s Exhibit 2, an Incident Information Sheet dated March 6, 2019, consisting of three index pages and one numbered page thereafter; Respondents’ Exhibit 1, another compilation of Claimant’s medical records, consisting of two index pages and 32 numbered pages thereafter; and Respondents’ Exhibit 2, non-medical records, consisting of one index page and six numbered pages thereafter. In addition, I have blue-backed to the record the March 12, 2020 email from Respondents’ counsel to the Commission concerning their withdrawal of their second contention, consisting of one page. Evidence Testimony. Claimant, who is a high school graduate and also possesses an associate degree, testified that during the time period at issue, he was employed by Respondent International Paper as the train operator for the delivery end of the corrugator machine. He described the process:
I—on the train, I worked the delivery end. There’s two sides to the delivery end. They have moving platforms that move the product off the line when it comes off and cut, shaped, stacked. There was another person, Wilbur. He would’ve been the stack tender. He would make sure it was in good shape when it got to me. I would move the train back and forth down several lines—21 lines altogether, I do believe. And the product would come off the conveyor belts onto the train that had two conveyor belts itself. Would move the product onto that, centered, and I would go to the right location, the right delivery point for it to feed the machinery and the other departments . . . [The train] basically is a flat platform with moveable conveyor belts on it to take the product from this area and transfer it to all 21 lines to the machinery that would need to be fed.The corrugated cardboard products that come onto the train varied in size, weight and number. The following exchange took place:
Q. So we’re here today about a wrist injury. Before you started working at International Paper, did you have any issues with your wrist?
A. No, sir.
Q. Okay. When did you hurt your wrist?
A. I hurt it the night that we were running the corrugate product, and they were having some problems with quality. The corrugate had a down curl to it. The piles were stacked probably about six foot or more. The board at that time when we were making it was, I’d say, three foot wide by about four foot and was coming out in two stacks. The board had curled so bad that it never laid flat after the rest of the corrugate came down on it . . . I was reaching down for the pile. The delivery operator, the stacker, her name was Cheryl, came running to me, saw that I had problems with one line, and I started feeding it on the next, and it worked at first. And went back to get the next load, doing my job, and all of the sudden that line stopped. I had no other options at the moment because the other lines were all full. She came over to try and help me put that load off of the train which was malfunctioning. The belt is a plastic or polyester board—belt that moves. It was really having problems going forward and backwards, so she was trying to help me get the load that was halfway hanging off onto the line and hopefully...
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