After persuasive legal arguments and strong medical evidence presented in briefs and a thorough hearing, Morgan, Collins, Yeast, & Salyer secured a favorable verdict from an administrative law judge for their client, Frank Sorrells, who filed a workers’ compensation claim due to cumulative trauma.
Mr. Sorrels had initially injured his lower back in the 1990s while working for one dairy company. He reported cumulative trauma to his lumbar spine, shoulders, hips, knees, hands, and wrists while working for another dairy company for 20 years. His primary responsibility was delivering, loading, and unloading heavy containers of milk.
The judge correctly pointed out that injury and cumulative trauma under the Workers’ Compensation Act are defined as “any work-related traumatic event or series of events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment which is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism evidenced by objective medical findings.” The judge had to consider the evidence presented to determine whether the nature and length of our client’s work “probably aggravated a degenerative condition to the degree that it culminated in active physical impairment sooner than would have been the case had the work been less strenuous.”
The judge found our evidence more persuasive than the defense’s, which the judge noted relied too heavily on identifying a specific event that caused the injury and notably omitted the harm to various parts of Mr. Sorrel’s body when calculating an impairment rating. He agreed with our witness’s medical findings and calculated a 44% impairment rating. He also found that our client was “totally and permanently occupationally disabled” due to not being able to perform the type of work that he had performed over the last 40 years.
Our client was awarded $986.95/week until he is 70 years old, as well as 6% interest on the past due and unpaid amounts of benefits he is entitled to. Additionally, his former employer is responsible for paying for his medical expenses, including healthcare providers’ fees, hospital treatment, surgical care, nursing supplies and appliances, prescriptions, and mileage reimbursements for medical treatments.
Morgan, Collins, Yeast, & Salyer is proud of the work we did and the results we provided to such a hard-working man. If you need a workers’ comp lawyer after your claim has been denied, do not hesitate to contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation.