Virginia: Fixed Law in Need of Fixing

April 25th, 2012 by

We thought we had heard the last of the bizarre Virginia workers comp statute that denied benefits to workers who suffered brain injuries: under the old statute, if a worker survived an accident but was unable to testify about the incident, no benefits were to be paid. We blogged two cases where the injuries were clearly work related, but where the testimony of the worker was not available. The claims were denied.
Last year the legislature revised the statute to read in part:

In any claim for compensation where the employee is physically or mentally unable to testify as confirmed by competent medical evidence and where there is unrebutted prima facie evidence that indicates the injury was work-related, it should be presumed in the absence of a preponderance of evidence to the contrary that the injury was work related.

Reporter Dan Casey of the Roanoke News is on the case again: With the new statute’s protections in place, a roofer named Herman Blair fell from a ladder and suffered multiple skull fractures. He filed a claim for indemnity and $350K in medical benefits. When he appeared for his workers comp hearing, he had no memory of the incident, but he was able to state his name and talk about other aspects of his life. On the basis of his ability to talk, Deputy Commissioner Phillip Burchett ruled that the injury was not compensable. Despite testimony from a co-worker, who heard a noise and saw Blair fall, Blair’s ability to speak nullified the presumption in the revised statute. Burchett writes:

The only thing we can determine is that the claimant was on the roof some several feet above the ground and he fell; however, that in and of itself does not establish that the fall arose out of the employment.

Commissioner Burchett has set a very high standard, indeed. The man is on a roof installing tile. He gets onto a ladder to descend, and ends up on the ground. What does Burchett think he was doing – texting? surfing the net? In the commissioner’s interpretation, if Blair had ended up in a coma, he would have had a compensable claim. But because he was conscious and able to talk, the claim had to be denied. [Burchett’s nitpicking ruling can be found at WorkCompCentral, subscription required.]
The Fix is Not Quite In
There was an effort to amend the statute to include a presumption for workers able to testify about some things but not “about the circumstances of the accident,” but the usual suspects (business and insurance advocates) pushed back by saying that this might open the door to abuse, with workers deliberately falling silent on the circumstances of their injuries. This, of course, is reminiscent of the original fear that workers would fake brain injuries. Sigh.
At some point Virginia will get this right and Herman Blair, having suffered insult after injury, will eventually collect his benefits. This fiasco illustrates how hard it is to get the language of a statute just right. You fix one problem and another arises. The only thing lacking in all of this is common sense and a little dignity: it should not require a legislative committee to determine that Herman Blair was injured on the job and is entitled to the life-enhancing benefits of the workers comp system.