Wyoming Supreme Court revives neck injury claim over venue

The Wyoming Supreme Court agreed with a worker’s argument that the rejected part of his workers compensation claim went to the wrong venue on appeal.

Joseph Daniel Polzer was injured in 2020 when he fell in a manhole while inspecting an underground fiber optics project in Evansville, Wyoming, according to Joseph Daniel Polzer v. State of Wyoming, ex rel. Department of Workforce Services, Workers’ Compensation Division. 

The high court said in summarizing the facts:

On December 31, 2020, the state Workers’ Compensation Division determined that the injuries to Mr. Polzer’s right shoulder, left knee and lumbar spine, or lower back, were compensable. Mr. Polzer had not reported or sought compensation for head or cervical spine, or neck, injuries at the time of that determination, and he did not object to the determination or seek to add cervical spine to the list of injuries for which he sought compensation.

In February 2021, Mr. Polzer sought coverage for surgery on his cervical spine. The division denied the request, concluding there was no causal relationship between his cervical spine injury and his work accident.

Mr. Polzer sought review. The division referred the matter for a contested-case hearing before the Office of Administrative Hearings, which Mr. Polzer argued was the wrong venue. He argued that because it was a “medically contested case,” by statute it “must be referred to the Medical Commission.”

The state’s highest court agreed. In a ruling Friday, it reversed and remanded the case back to the Medical Commission, writing that “(t)he evidence before the Division at the time it referred the matter to (the Office of Administrative Hearings) required the application of medical judgment to complex medical facts and conflicting medical diagnoses.”

In examining the record, the court wrote that “two physicians said Mr. Polzer’s cervical spine injury was unrelated to the work accident; one concluded he did not have ‘much insight as to the origin’ of Mr. Polzer’s cervical spine injury; and two believed the injury to be either caused by the accident or that the accident aggravated a preexisting condition.”