Commission erroneously relied on report in denying claim

The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission wrongly determined a worker didn’t suffer a repetitive trauma injury and that it erred in strictly relying on an employer-commissioned ergonomics report.

In Dale Brooks v. Benore Logistics System Inc., the high court wrote that while the workers comp commission has the “authority and responsibility” in repetitive trauma cases to determine whether an employee’s job is repetitive, it still must rely on the facts of individual cases and not use a “statistical probability to determine if an individual worker sustained a work-related injury.”

Mr. Brooks claimed he sustained repetitive back trauma as a “switcher” truck operator. His employer declined to use its doctors to treat Mr. Brooks, instead commissioning an ergonomics report looking at general risks to which Mr. Brooks was exposed.  

The report found Mr. Brooks’ job, which involved moving semitruck trailers and ocean freight containers, was unlikely to cause repetitive trauma.

The comp commission affirmed the claim’s denial, but an appellate court reversed that decision. The employer and its insurer, Great American Alliance Insurance Co., appealed to the Supreme Court.

The high court found the comp commission’s claim denial “not remotely supported by any evidence in the record.”

“We find the ergonomics report had little relevance on the issue of the repetitive nature of the work and no relevance on the issue of causation,” wrote the court, which remanded the case to the comp commission for benefits calculation.