Leech v Phoenix Home Care
2017 MOWCLR LEXIS 45 (Oct 12, 2017)
The Commission affirms a temporary award for benefits for an 2015 injury to the right shoulder while a loading a tub into a vehicle which included an award of more than a year in unpaid temporary disability benefits.
The issues in dispute were medical causation, the obligation to pay temporary total and medical benefits and attorney's fees.
The claimant is a 49 year old home health care worker employed in Greene County.
She lifted a 20-25 pound plastic tub into the trunk of a patient's car and slipped causing a jerking motion to he right shoulder. The treating doctor identified adhesive capsulitis. The ALJ noted about a month later the doctor "changed" his diagnosis to "diabetic" frozen shoulder and placed her at MMI. The doctor found no traumatic pathology within the shoulder. She denied prior symptoms.
Dr. Putnam concluded that claimant's accident was the prevailing factor in her frozen shoulder, although diabetes placed her at greater risk to develop adhesive capsulitis, which occurs idiopathically or from trauma.
The ALJ found the employer expert, Dr. Roeder, to be less persuasive and "inconsistent at best". The ALJ found the employer was not subject to sanctions for unreasonable defense because it could reasonably rely upon the medical expert. The ALJ rejected the employer's request for a "credit" for cancellation of a deposition of its own expert "by claimant's attorney."
ALJ Fischer
Atty: Winget, Vessell
Experts: Roeder, Putnam
