Courts accused of not considering all medical evidence in Walmart case

The Supreme Court South Carolina on Wednesday granted an injured Walmart Inc. employee continued medical treatment and accused the Appellate Panel of the Worker’s Compensation Commission of having “cherry-picked” medical evidence in its decision to deny additional care for a previously closed workers compensation claim.

Paula Russell injured her back in 2009 while working as an assistant manager at Walmart and reached maximum medical improvement in 2011 with a 7% disability rating, according to Paula Russell v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. She returned to work that same year, but her pain and symptoms soon worsened, and she sought to open a claim for additional medical treatment, which was denied.

After what the high court called years of a “slow-motion procedural rodeo” between the commission and appellate state courts, the appellate division denied her treatment, favoring medical imaging as evidence despite several doctors testifying that her condition, caused by her 2009 injury, had become aggravated.

In reversing and remanding, the state Supreme Court said an appellate panel “admitted there was ‘some’ medical evidence in the record that could be ‘cherry-picked’ to support either position on this change of condition dispute. This was a telling statement. By exalting the MRI over the uncontradicted medical opinions in the record, the (panel) picked the MRI as the decisive cherry. In doing so, the (panel) created a false equivalency between the medical opinions and the MRI.”