Worker’s permanent impairment claims found questionable

A worker failed to show she sustained permanent injuries when she was rear-ended by a co-worker in her employer’s parking lot.

In Aikins v. Gates Corp., a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed a Kansas Workers Compensation Appeals Board decision on Friday that found the worker had sustained an injury but failed to show she was permanently disabled.

In December 2014, Cathy Melonie Aikins and her son were pulling out of the parking lot of her employer when a fellow employee rear-ended her vehicle. She said she sustained severe injuries, but her son was uninjured, and the police officer who responded to the accident reported that neither vehicle was damaged. She settled a personal-injury action against her co-worker’s insurer for $15,000 as well as $550 in car repairs, and also sought payment for her injuries through the company’s workers compensation policy.

She later sought medical treatment and a CT scan revealed a disc protrusion in her back that required surgery. She was involved in two additional rear-end car accidents — one in 2015 and one in 2016 — but claimed she did not sustain injuries in these.

Ms. Aikins’ testimony regarding the extent of her body’s impact with her vehicle and the estimated speed of her co-worker varied in different interviews; her co-worker testified that he had been idling at the time of the crash and that the impact resembled that of “a bumper car.”

Several medical experts agreed that the presence of degenerative changes was a likely cause of Ms. Aikins’ symptoms and that the low-impact nature of the accident was unlikely to produce such injuries in the absence of such a preexisting condition.

An administrative law judge awarded Ms. Aikins benefits, stating that although he found it “unlikely” that her accident could have resulted in injuries of the magnitude she described, he found her to be 26% permanently impaired. The Kansas Workers Compensation Appeals Board reversed the ALJ’s decision, holding that Ms. Aikins failed to establish that she sustained “permanent functional impairment” from the collision. She appealed, but the Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed the board’s decision.

The appellate court also found that the police report, the repair bill of about $500, physician testimony and Ms. Aikins’ accident history “contributed to the questionable nature of her claims” and affirmed the board’s holding that she did not sustain a permanent impairment from the parking lot accident.