Appeals court says injured teacher entitled to benefits despite car accident

An appeals court in Arkansas on Wednesday affirmed benefits to a teacher who suffered a continuum of several injuries after a desk she was leaning on fell, despite having other physical ailments from a previous car accident.

The Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission found that Margaret Macon sustained compensable injuries to her neck and back in her 2020 fall, which co-workers and students had witnessed, and ruled that “all medical treatment provided and additional treatment proposed was reasonably necessary treatment for those injuries,” according to Mineral Springs School District and Arkansas School Boards Association v. Margaret Macon, filed by the Court of Appeals of Arkansas.

On appeal, the school district argued that “substantial evidence” does not support that Ms. Macon’s list of injuries to several body parts was not compensable and contended that many are preexisting, citing evidence that she had been in a car accident in 2016.

Acknowledging that injuries suffered in her earlier car accident may have been aggravated by the 2020 fall, the appeals court wrote that the injuries in the classroom are compensable and that “an employer takes the employee as the employer finds him, and employment circumstances that aggravate preexisting conditions are compensable.”