Wilkins Patterson shareholders Joe Wilkins and Nick Garrard recently obtained a favorable ruling from the Mississippi Court of Appeals, which reversed and rendered a decision from the Workers’ Compensation Commission. In the en banc decision, the Court found that the Claimant had not sustained a loss of wage earning capacity since she returned to work and continued performing all of her pre-injury job functions without accommodation.
This is the second time this case has been reversed by the Mississippi appellate courts. In October, 2016, the Mississippi Supreme Court found that the Workers’ Compensation Commission had failed to properly apply the applicable presumption, and remanded the case back to the Commission so that the presumption on loss of wage-earning capacity could be properly applied. On remand, the Commission again found that the presumption did not apply, or that the Claimant had rebutted the presumption without a specific finding of facts to support that conclusion.
Having considered the case for the second time, the Court of Appeals reversed and rendered, finding that the Commission had failed to properly apply the presumption as mandated by the Supreme Court, and that the Claimant had presented no evidence to rebut the presumption that she had not suffered a loss of wage-earning capacity. Because the finding of the Commission was against the weight of the evidence, the Court dismissed the Claimant’s case with prejudice.
You can read the full decision from the Court of Appeals here.