The Court of Appeals of Virginia reversed a decision of the state Workers Compensation Commission (the Commission) that awarded temporary partial disability benefits to an injured employee after the employee failed to show a causal connection between his lost wages and his workplace injury. The case is Va. Alcoholic Bev. Control Auth. v. Blot, 2022 Va. App. LEXIS 416 (Va. Ct. App. 2022).
In December 2019, Blot was employed part-time at a liquor store in Virginia. He tripped over a rug and "wrenched his knee" while serving a customer; Blot reported the injury as soon as he was finished helping that customer. He sought treatment from an orthopedic surgeon in January 2020. The physician gave Blot periodic steroid injections in his knee and recommended he refrain from activities aggravating his injury, which included going up and down stairs, kneeling, walking, standing, and exercising. Though the steroid injections alleviated some of Blot's pain, they did not improve his other symptoms; an MRI revealed Blot had a torn meniscus.
At the end of March, Blot stopped working on the advice of his cardiologist, who was concerned about Blot's exposure to Covid-19. He was cleared for "light duty" work after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine in February 2021, but the liquor store manager had already replaced him; the store had also revamped its system, which meant Blot needed to be re-trained. Blot worked reduced hours as he began applying to other jobs with his reduced physical capacity in mind; none of the fifty-four separate applications led to success.
Blot initially sought a lifetime medical award, temporary total disability benefits for the time he did not work, and temporary partial disability benefits from the time he began working again. The initial decision awarded Blot his lifetime medical benefits, but denied the temporary total and temporary partial disability benefits because Blot's decision not to work was based on health concerns related to the Covid-19 pandemic, not his knee injury. On Blot's appeal, the Commission granted Blot's request for temporary partial disability beginning the day he returned to work after being vaccinated. The liquor store appealed.
In the Court of Appeals of Virginia, the judges focused on whether Blot's knee injury was causally connected to his reduced hours. Blot's employer argued that, even taking for granted Blot's admission that he needed to be retrained on the new system and had other scheduling problems, he had worked for nearly three months after injuring his knee without restrictions. The employer also pointed out that Blot had stopped working in 2020 due to the pandemic, not his knee injury.
The court agreed with the employer. It reasoned that partial disability benefits are only available upon a clear showing that a claimant's injury was causally related to the claimant's inability to work. As Blot had worked with his bad knee without restrictions for three months, as well as stopping work on the advice of his cardiologist, the evidence did not show that Blot's knee injury was related to his reduced working hours. Rather, it showed almost the opposite, and the court reversed the award of temporary partial disability benefits, with one judge dissenting.
Editor's Note: There are three types of awards at stake here: lifetime medical benefits, temporary total disability, and temporary partial disability. It is important to read closely and realize that only the temporary partial disability award made it to the Court of Appeals of Virginia. There was never a question of whether Blot's injury, in and of itself, was work-related, or of whether the medical treatment Blot received was causally related to his workplace injury. He was at work and on the clock at the time he hurt his knee, reported the injury the day after it occurred, and sought treatment for that injury within a month. These facts supported awarding lifetime medical benefits because Blot would have to deal with the consequences of this injury for the rest of his life. However, the reason Blot stopped work in March 2020 was related to the Covid-19 pandemic, not the knee injury. Since there was not a causal relationship between Blot stopping work and his knee injury, there was no support for a temporary total disability award. When Blot returned to work, his pre-injury work position had been filled and the system had been upgraded. Blot admitted, and the evidence showed, that he had other scheduling problems on top of having to learn the ins and outs of the new system. This pattern showed no causal connection between Blot's knee injury and his reduced hours because the scheduling issues and need to train on the new system would have existed even if Blot hadn't injured his knee. There was no support for the earlier award of temporary partial disability benefits, so the court reversed it.