The Tennessee Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board will hold its next set of oral arguments on March 24, 2020, at the Supreme Court Building in Knoxville.

On the (very full) docket are:

• Johnston v. Sisken Steel & Supply Co.: The Employer is challenging medical causation and an award of permanent total disability benefits in an occupational disease case after a compensation hearing.
• Mollica v. EHHI Holdings, Inc.: The employer seeks review of an expedited hearing order granting medical benefits for an alleged mental injury and awarding payment of past medical and temporary total disability benefits.
• Nickerson v. Knox Cnty. Gov’t: The employer seeks review of a denial of summary judgment in an alleged mental injury case where the employer argued the case is time-barred.
• Hudgins v. Global Personnel Solutions, Inc.: The employer contests the propriety of an order granting addition medical benefits and temporary disability benefits, where the physician wrote that the worker’s condition “possibly” arose from the work injury.
• Barnes v. Jack Cooper Transp. Co.: The employer appeals an expedited hearing order for medical benefits, where the trial court found the authorized physician’s causation opinion wasn’t entitled to a statutory presumption of correctness  because the worker selected him from a panel of two remaining physicians after the first physician he chose declined to see him.
• Ibarra v. Amazon Fulfillment Servs.: The employer challenges an expedited hearing order concluding that the worker satisfied the notice requirements and sustained a gradual injury identifiable by time and place, and that the authorized treating physician didn’t offer an opinion on medical causation.

The arguments will begin at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. We plan to post an article summarizing the arguments afterward.