West Virginia high court sides with young coal worker

The West Virginia Supreme Court on Friday granted further medical testing and benefits to a young coal industry worker, chiding lower courts over “paltry analysis” for failing to consider all medical evidence and state law on injury presumptions.

Caitlin Workman, who was 23 at the time, was working in a coal mine in 2021 when a chain under tension snapped and its attached hook struck her right upper extremity area. Shortly after her workplace injuries were held compensable for right shoulder contusion and right back laceration, she developed symptoms including increased pain and weakness in her right arm, right grip strength deficit, and noticeable tremor, according to Caitlin R. Workman v. ACNR Resources, Inc.

In the face of conflicting evidence offered by Ms. Workman’s doctors and an independent medical examination paid for by her employer, ACNR Resources Inc., the claim administrator “summarily” determined that Ms. Workman had achieved maximum medical improvement and suspended her temporary total disability benefits. Both the West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Board of Review and later the Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed the decision based on medical evidence that both said proved she had reached maximum medical improvement.

On appeal, the state’s highest court said that determination was “clearly wrong,” drawing attention to the employer-paid medical exam. That examiner, the court wrote, “noted Ms. Workman’s continued complaints of pain and weakness and observed a grip strength deficit between her right and left hands — among the same symptoms observed by her three treating medical professionals. Still, he summarily concluded that those symptoms were not related to the compensable injury without any analysis to explain why this otherwise healthy 23-year-old worker would develop the (right upper extremity) symptoms in the absence of the compensable injury.”

In reversing, the court said “evidence submitted by Ms. Workman showed that she continued experiencing symptoms that related to her workplace injury,” and cited state law that stipulates “(i)f an injured employee provides some evidence to demonstrate that a particular injury did arise from the subject industrial accident, absent evidence which to some degree of certainty attributes the injury to a cause other than the subject accident, it will be presumed to have resulted from such accident.”