Nurse entitled to disability benefits despite working months after accident, Supreme Court rules

A nurse who said she felt a pull in her back when pushing a 100-pound rolling cart against a wall but kept working for several months was correctly granted permanent total disability benefits, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled on Nov. 21.

The former nurse, Jeannie E. Harper, originally left the workforce in 2013 following neck surgery that left her unable to walk. But she eventually recovered and, in June 2018, became employed as a nurse at Springfield Rehab and Health Care Center.

Later that month, she was making patient rounds and discovered a medical cart, weighing about 100 pounds, angled from a wall into the hallway. Believing this was a danger to patients, Harper pushed the cart against the wall using her hips and back.

She felt a pull in her back but kept working, though she began feeling discomfort during her shift and, by the end of it, had trouble walking.

Over the following months, Harper saw doctors and kept working, though she struggled to make her rounds and complete other duties and often called in sick because she could not get out of bed. In November 2018, she resigned.

The next month, she filed a claim for workers’ compensation. She testified before an administrative law judge that she had continual pain in her back and legs and had to lie or sit down for most of the day to ease the pain. Dr. P. Brent Koprivica testified that the cart incident caused enhanced narrowing and constriction of the spinal column, causing new pain generators that Harper did not have before that incident. The administrative law judge found Harper and Dr. Koprivica credible and awarded her lifetime permanent total disability benefits and future medical care to address her work injury.

On appeal, Springfield Rehab argued that Harper did not experience a workplace accident, since there was a lack of evidence the incident produced objective symptoms of an injury when it happened. During oral arguments, Springfield Rehab’s attorney, Kevin Leahy of Leahy, Wright & Associates in St. Louis, argued that allowing the decision to stand would open up employers to claims for soft tissue injuries without clear evidence of their cause.

An accident, according to Missouri Workers’ Compensation Law, means, in part, an “unexpected traumatic event or unusual strain identifiable by time and place of occurrence and producing at the time objective symptoms of an injury caused by a specific event during a single work shift.” Harper felt an immediate pull, and her testimony was supported by a doctor’s note of her immediate complaint. Therefore, the Supreme Court denied this point.

Springfield Rehab also argued that, because Harper continued to work for months after the incident, the conclusion that the incident left her permanently and totally disabled was erroneous. But Springfield Rehab failed to note that Harper struggled to complete her work and make it to work during that period, according to the Supreme Court.

“Harper’s efforts to continue working through debilitating pain do not equate to future employability,” Judge W. Brent Powell wrote in the majority opinion, which affirmed the final award and compensation.

Harper’s attorney, Randy Alberhasky of the Alberhasky Law Firm in Springfield, said the court’s decision confirmed what the law has been for nearly 100 years.

“I think it just goes to show that not all accidents are glamorous or need to be, necessarily, dramatic in a sort of generic sense of the word. The purpose of the Workers Compensation Law is to provide compensation and health care benefits to people who are injured while they’re doing their employer’s work, and that’s what was accomplished here,” he said. “Even though her initial symptoms didn’t sound like much, these are exactly the type of injuries that people deal with on a day-in, day-out basis.”

Judges Kelly C. Broniec and Ginger K. Gooch did not participate in this case. Judge Zel M. Fischer wrote a concurring opinion, agreeing with the conclusion of the majority opinion but arguing that the court should have dismissed the appeal because of Springfield Rehab’s “repeated, wholesale noncompliance” with the court’s mandatory briefing requirements, which caused the court to struggle to interpret the meaning of Springfield Rehab’s points relied on.

“The principal opinion dismisses Springfield Rehab’s second and fifth points relied on but then gratuitously reviews the remaining points to the extent they can be discerned and interpreted.  My concern is, and always has been, that the moment this Court attempts to discern or interpret a noncompliant point relied on, it risks blurring the clear line Rule 84.04 draws between neutrality and well-intentioned, but ill-advised, advocacy,” Fischer wrote.

Alberhasky said that, while he was pleased with the outcome of the case, he had filed a motion to dismiss because of this issue.

“I didn’t think his points relied on were compliant with the rules, and I think they were very hard to respond to for that reason,” he said.

Leahy congratulated Alberhasky but did not wish to comment further as he and his client are contemplating a motion for reconsideration.

The case is Harper v. Springfield Rehab, SC100006

RELATED: Supreme Court weighs lagging symptoms in work comp case