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Court of Appeals scolds Workers' Comp Commission for ignoring ruling Thursday, May 29, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The state Court of Appeal took the extraordinary steps Wednesday of issuing an additional opinion in a case on which it had already ruled and chastising the state Workers' Compensation Commission for refusing to comply with its previous decision. In December 2006, the court reversed a commission decision denying disability benefits to Pine Bluff police officer Jimmy Singleton, who was shot in the head and left ankle by a suspect in March 2003 and still had bullet fragments in his body. The appellate court said the commission erred when it rejected a doctor's opinion because the opinion was based on "non-objective evidence" - i.e., the way Singleton walked. The court remanded the case to the commission "for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." In its supplemental opinion Wednesday, the Court of Appeals said that instead of complying with its order, the commission "ignored our mandate and denied relief on the same theory of law that we held to be erroneous in our prior opinion." The commission explained its second denial of benefits by saying it had adopted the Fourth Edition of the "Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment" as a guide for evaluating impairment, and no table or figure in that volume allowed the commission to classify Singleton as having permanent anatomical impairment. The appeals court said Wednesday the commission had no authority "to adopt a guide that changes the definition of compensable injury as established by the Legislature and interpreted by the Arkansas judiciary," or to deviate from a mandate from an appellate court. It remanded the case again for proceedings consistent with its ruling. "Should the commission, on remand, again refuse to comply with our mandate, recourse may be had to enforcement by the Arkansas Supreme Court," Judge John Mauzy Pittman wrote. |
