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Appeals court rejects textile worker’s comp claim

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textile

An appeals court in South Carolina denied an injured textile worker’s claim of an aggravated preexisting psychological condition following a fall, affirming two earlier decisions.

The woman was working as a weaver for BGF Industries Inc. in 2012 when she fell after stumbling backward into a hand truck that had been placed behind her while she was working on a weaving machine. She struck her head, causing a laceration and scrape marks along her neck. She declined to go to the hospital at that time, the wound was closed with glue from the company's first-aid supplies, and she finished her shift, according to documents in Opinion No. 5822, filed in the Court of Appeals of South Carolina in Columbia.

The woman worked for a week after the fall, and her supervisor sent her for evaluation to a local hospital where she had a CT scan that showed normal results; yet the woman complained of fatigue, nausea, blurred vision, spasms in her legs and mood swings and was later seen by a number of doctors, according to documents.

During litigation it was revealed that she had suffered a previous workplace injury in 2007, and that many of her symptoms, including her anxiety and depression, were preexisting, according to documents.

A single commissioner and later the full commission denied her workers comp claims for the 2012 injury, stating that the evidence showed that the worker lacked credibility and that she had denied some “relatively major prior issues entirely” in her testimony.

The appeals court affirmed, writing that the woman’s medical records “demonstrated a long-standing history of serious psychological issues. Additionally, the medical evidence showed Claimant did not lose consciousness when she fell and two weeks post-fall, she exhibited no ‘focal neurological deficits.’”

The appeals court also referred to one medical report that indicated “Claimant's injury was not the type that should have produced the issues she was suffering and that in his opinion, Claimant was malingering.”