DOT worker with mental injuries can submit new evidence

A Missouri Department of Transportation worker who witnessed death on the job and claims she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder leading to permanent disability can submit new evidence after the Supreme Court of Missouri in 2017 reversed her award, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The woman, who worked for the department for more than 20 years and eventually became supervisor, helped provide traffic control and assistance at accident scenes. In 2008, she was diagnosed with depression and began counseling, after which led to additional diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. She filed a workers compensation claim for mental injuries that same year, according to documents in No. SC 95885, filed in 2017 in Supreme Court of Missouri in Jefferson City, Missouri, the case on which Tuesday’s ruling is based upon.

The state Supreme Court in 2017 vacated a 50% partial disability award, which arose from an order from the state Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, on the basis that the woman failed to prove that her witnessing death on the job caused her disability, writing “(t)here was no evidence presented in this case that Employee’s work-related stress was objectively ‘extraordinary and unusual’ as statutorily required.” The state’s highest court did, however, remand the decision back to lower court, according to those documents.

In the related Missouri Department of Transportation v. the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, filed Tuesday in the Court of Appeals, Western District, in Kansas City, Missouri, the transportation department sought a reversal of an earlier circuit court decision that squashed the transportation department’s motion to prohibit new medical evidence submitted by the worker.

“Finding no error,” the appeals court affirmed, allowing the woman’s new evidence — which it saw in line with the state Supreme Court’s ruling — to be submitted.

“Because the Supreme Court’s mandate did not prohibit the Commission from permitting new evidence, the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in quashing the preliminary writ and denying permanent relief,” Tuesday’s ruling states.