Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Supports Alabama Employee’s Claim for Unscheduled Benefits
An Alabama appellate court reversed a final judgment entered by a state trial court that awarded an employee, in pertinent part, a scheduled permanent partial disability for a 59 percent loss of his right arm under Ala. Code § 25-5-57(a) [Turner v. Robert J. Baggett, Inc., 2021 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 7 (Feb. 5, 2021)]. Quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, and reasoning that the employee’s diagnosis included complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), the appellate court held that in as much as the employee’s injury was not limited to a single member, an award under the schedule was inappropriate. The case was remanded for further proceedings.
Background
The employee ruptured his right biceps tendon in a work-related accident. An orthopedic surgeon surgically repaired the ruptured tendon in August 2014. Following the surgery, the employee complained of continuing burning right-arm pain as well as swelling and intermittent numbness and tingling in his right hand and wrist. The surgeon referred the employee a neurologist.
The neurologist diagnosed the employee with CRPS of the upper extremity, with permanent disability directly resulting from his work-related injury. Based on the post-surgical CRPS, swelling to the right arm and hand, and reported neck pain, the neurologist a 59 percent impairment to the employee’s right upper extremity (translated to a 35 percent impairment to the body as a whole), but also testified that he believed the employee was permanently and totally disabled. As noted above, the trial court, utilizing the § 25-5-57(a)(3) schedule, awarded PPD benefits based solely on the 59 percent impairment to the arm. The employee appealed, contending that he was disabled on a PTD basis and that he should be compensated outside the schedule.
Appellate Court Decision
The appellate court noted that there were two exceptions to the statutory mandate that an injury to a scheduled member must be compensated pursuant to the schedule. The first exception was where the effects of the loss of the member extended to other parts of the body and interfered with their efficiency. The second exception is for pain that completely, or almost completely, physically debilitates the worker [see Norandal USA, Inc. v. Graben, 133 So. 3d 386 (Ala. Civ. App. 2010)]. The trial court had determined that the employee in the instant case had not met the Graben exception requirement.
As to the first exception, the appellate court held that substantial evidence did not support the trial court’s factual determination that the injury was contained solely within the right arm. The court stressed that the undisputed objective medical evidence indicated that the injury affected the employee’s spinal-cord nerves, causing a painful debilitating condition. True, the employer had pointed to discrepancies in the evidence that might have affected the credibility of the employee’s claim that his injury caused him neck pain and depression, but, even assuming that the trial court could have discounted those complaints, it remained undisputed that the employee exhibited objective signs of CRPS impairing an area of his body beyond his right arm, i.e., his central nervous system.
The trial court was not free to disregard undisputed evidence in order to support its findings. The appellate court found that under the circumstances, the only factual conclusion to be drawn was that the injury to the employee’s right arm extended to another nonscheduled part of the employee’s body and interfereed with its efficiency. The court declined to render a judgment finding the employee permanently and totally disabled, as the employee had requested, because the duty of determining the extent of disability was a function of the trial court as the fact-finder. Accordingly, the trial court’s judgment was reversed and the case remanded.