The Appeals Board has released its latest oral argument docket, where cases will be heard both live and virtually. On January 21, 2025, the Board will head to Jackson, Tennessee to hear four appeals. The cases present a wide variety of fascinating legal issues.

First, the judges will consider the sufficiency of an employee’s notice of her cumulative-trauma knee injury in White v. Federal Express Corp. After a compensation hearing, the trial court denied the claim. The employee contends that she reported her injury within 15 days of learning “the significance” of it, as revealed in MRI results.

Second, in Markin v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division, the trial court rejected a willful misconduct defense at an expedited hearing. The facts are somewhat novel. A plastic bottle exploded, causing the employee to lose an eye. The bottle had been placed under hoses that supplied oxygen and acetylene gas for welding; it exploded after a coworker lit a welding torch. The employer claimed the employee wasn’t wearing his safety glasses and that he and the coworkers intentionally exploded the bottle as horseplay.

What’s unusual about the third case is the procedural posture, the denial of a proposed settlement, and that the parties jointly appealed. The Board will probe the standards for approving disputed settlements under section 50-6-240(e) in Torres v. Allvan Corp. In a written opinion (that’s atypical at this stage, too), the trial court reasoned that the claim was accepted and the authorized doctor never gave an impairment rating, so counsel agreed to a 0% rating. Can counsel agree to a rating under those circumstances? Where’s the “dispute”? And did the court rely on a blog post as legal authority? 

Fourth and finally, the Board will consider whether a trial judge erred by denying a motion to exclude a C-32 that was filed after the expiration of a deadline to depose experts. The employer contends that two types of physician depositions exist in workers’ compensation—a “deposition upon oral examination” and a “deposition by C-32”—so the C-32 in this case was a deposition that was filed after the deadline. The case is Pritchard v. GSP Transportation.

White and Markin will be argued in-person beginning at 9:00 a.m. Central Time in the Supreme Court Building, 402 S. Shannon St. in Jackson. The virtual arguments start at 11:30 a.m. in Torres and 12:40 p.m. in Pritchard. Links to view them are available in the docket.