By Jane Salem, staff attorney, Nashville

I love to listen to ‘70s music. I never get tired of some songs. “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. “Your Song” by Elton John. “Beautiful” By Carole King. I grew up with this music.

I’m a broken record in some ways. Remember 45s and cassettes, and the Columbia Music Club? As Don Draper on “Mad Men” (also a favorite) once said, “Nostalgia is powerful.”

In workers’ compensation, I see a lot of repetition as well—in a good way. The law requires us to apply precedent, after all. And some cases really merit constant repeating, because they’re just chock full of so many useful morsels.

Below are a few cases that are on heavy rotation in my brain. For anyone new to the practice, these cases are must-reads. But even if you’re not, maybe this article will serve as a helpful reminder of some of the most oft-cited principles in our daily work.  

The year 2015 was huge, because it yielded four opinions that are constantly cited.

Perhaps the grandaddy is McCord v. Advantage Human Resourcing. The Appeals Board released this in March 2015, just nine months after the Reform Act took effect, and it’s easily the most-cited case for our court. The Board clarified the standard at expedited hearings, which is the most common procedural posture in the orders written at the trial-court level. They held “an employee need not prove each and every element of his or her claim by a preponderance of the evidence at an expedited hearing to be entitled to temporary disability or medical benefits, but must instead present evidence sufficient for the trial court to conclude that the employee would likely prevail at a hearing on the merits in accordance with the express terms of section 50-6-239(d)(1).”

That seems pretty basic, right? But remember how uncertain those early days were. Nothing was a given back then.

In fact, McCord also told us in a footnote when “old law” cases remain viable: “Reliance on precedent from the Tennessee Supreme Court is appropriate unless it is evident that the Supreme Court’s decision or rationale relied on a remedial interpretation of pre-July 1, 2014 statutes, that it relied on specific statutory language no longer contained in the Workers’ Compensation Law, and/or that it relied on an analysis that has since been addressed by the general assembly through statutory amendments.” Before this note, some practitioners contended that close to a century of caselaw no longer applied.

That same month, the Board tackled one of its first medical causation cases, Brees v. Escape Day Spa & Salon. They cited a truly seminal comp case, Orman v. Williams Sonoma, Inc., to explain the process for reconciling conflicting medical expert opinions. “[A] trial court may consider, among other things, the qualifications of the experts, the circumstances of their examination, the information available to them, and the evaluation of the importance of that information through other experts.” We use this quote constantly.

Then in May, the Board released Dorsey v. Amazon.com, a medical causation classic. These days, doctors delegate patient care often, and with the current physician shortage, nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants provide invaluable services to patients with routine injuries. But legally, we have a limit on just how far they can go: “The opinion of the nurse practitioner cannot provide a valid basis for denial of the claim based on causation. A nurse is not an expert who can testify as to medical causation.”

Not long afterward, Hackney v. Integrity Staffing Solutions came down, citing another longstanding and oft-cited precedent: “An employer may risk being required to pay for unauthorized treatment if it does not provide the treatment made reasonably necessary by the work injury as required by Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-204(a)(1)(A). However, the employer must first be given an opportunity to provide the treatment, and whether an employee is justified in seeking additional medical services to be paid for by the employer without consulting the employer depends on the circumstances of each case.”

Then in December, the Board gifted us with Jones v. Crencor Leasing and Sales, in which they repeated a couple of very important precedents: what’s needed for an award of temporary total disability benefits, and when they might not be appropriate. Specifically, eligibility for these benefits requires that “(1) the worker became disabled from working due to a compensable injury; (2) there is a causal connection between the injury and the inability to work; and (3) the worker established the duration of the period of disability.” Simpson v. Satterfield. The Board further reminded, “[E]ven though an employee has a work-related injury for which temporary benefits are payable, the employer is entitled to enforce workplace rules. Carter v. First Source Furniture Grp.

Fast-forward to 2017; this was when the Board clarified that a doctor doesn’t need to parrot the statute for a court to credit their medical causation opinions. In Panzarella v. Amazon.com, they held: “A physician may render an opinion that meets the legal standard espoused in section 50-6-102(14) without couching the opinion in a rigid recitation of the statutory definition. What is necessary, however, is sufficient proof from which the trial court can conclude that the statutory requirements of an injury as defined in section 50-6-102(14) are satisfied.” In other words, doctors don’t need to speak legalese for courts to adopt their opinions. They can stay in their lanes.

The flipside is, legal professionals and litigants, stay in your lanes, too. In 2018 in Lurz v. International Paper Co., the Board cautioned, “Judges are not well-suited to make independent medical determinations without expert medical testimony supporting such a determination. Likewise, parties and their lawyers cannot rely solely on their own medical interpretations of the evidence to successfully support their arguments.”

I’ll end with one last case that’s cited often for two key points, Limberakis v. Pro-Tech Security, Inc. The central holding of this 2017 case is that “[i]n an accepted claim, unless a court terminates an employee’s entitlement to medical benefits, or approves a settlement in which the parties reach a compromise on the issue of future medical benefits, an injured worker remains entitled to reasonable and necessary medical treatment causally-related to the work injury.” The takeaway was that if an authorized physician is willing to see an injured worker, if the treatment is reasonable, necessary and work-related, the employee’s visit generally should be authorized.

In reaching that conclusion, the Board repeated, “The Supreme Court has consistently held that an employee’s assessment as to his or her own physical condition is competent testimony that is not to be disregarded.”

I could go on and on with my list of oft-cited cases. But this article is already over 1,100 words. Maybe mention in the comments a case that you cut-and-paste constantly? We’d appreciate that.

Rock on, workers’ comp practitioners. Now I’m going to listen to one of the best and longest rock songs ever: “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits, clocking in at over 14 minutes on the recorded version. It never gets too old or too long!

Thursday is the first day of spring. Hooray!