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Worker entitled to flesh-eating bacteria treatment

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Wyoming

A miner who contracted flesh-eating bacteria after scraping his knuckle on a locker after work is entitled to workers compensation for the months-long treatment he received for the virus, the Wyoming Supreme Court held Monday.

In the Matter of the Workers Compensation Claim of Vinson v. Vinson, the court unanimously held that the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings erred in holding that the miner’s illness was not compensable because of state statute’s “illness or communicable disease” exclusion. 

Michael Vinson worked as a miner in a trona mine owned by Tata Chemicals Soda Ash Partners Ltd. After a shift, he showered in the employee locker room and changed into clean clothes as he did after every shift and accidentally scraped his knuckles on a locker, causing the knuckle of his right index finger to briefly bleed. At the end of the following day, he noticed that his right hand was swollen and red and he developed chills. The next morning, his wife found his arm swollen up to his elbow and took him to the emergency room. He was flown by air ambulance to a hospital in Salt Lake City and diagnosed with flesh-eating bacteria. He spent a month in the hospital undergoing aggressive antibiotic therapy.

He filed for workers compensation benefits with the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services Workers Compensation Division, which found his injury to be compensable. Tata objected and appealed to the Office of Administrative Hearings, arguing that his injuries were not compensable under Wyoming’s work-related injuries statutes excluding “illness or communicable disease.”

The OAH agreed, holding that while Mr. Vinson proved that his workplace knuckle scrape resulted in his infection, the exclusion applied. Mr. Vinson appealed, and a district court rejected the OAH’s decision, holding that “the infection was a compensable consequence of the original work-related scrape injury” and determined that the “illness or communicable disease” exclusion did not apply because his illness was not similar to an ordinary illness typically excluded like the cold or flu.

Tata appealed again, but the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s ruling, holding that Mr. Vinson’s injury was compensable. Although Tata argued that Mr. Vinson was not required to shower and that the union contract considers showering unpaid time, the court held that the “simple fact” that he was not on the clock was “not determinative of whether his work conditions” contributed to the injury. The court also noted that a medical expert opined that his infection was related to the injury and that the bacteria was likely already colonized on Mr. Vinson’s skin when the scape occurred and served as a “portal of entry” into his body. Since there was no reasonable dispute that Mr. Vinson’s infection was a “communicable disease” the court found that OAH’s decision that it was excluded was “arbitrary and capricious” and affirmed the district court’s award of benefits to Mr. Vinson.

 

 

 

 

 

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