Omaha Steve (1000+ posts) Tue Jul-08-08 09:22 PM
Original message
Wal-Mart Seeks to Deny Workers’ Disability Benefits—Again
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/07/08/wal-mart-seeks-to-den... /
by James Parks, Jul 8, 2008
Last week, Wal-Mart trotted out a new corporate logo in the hopes of turning around its public image as a company that cares more about the bottom line than its employees and customers. But don’t tell that to Jimmy Singleton and Deborah Shank.
Back in November, the retail giant, which made nearly $13 billion in profits last year, sued Shank, a former employee who suffered permanent brain damage in a car accident, to get back $470,000 it spent on her medical bills. After a public uproar, Wal-Mart backed off. Now, Wal-Mart is at it again, with a different target.
David Nassar reports on The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nassar/wal-mart-kic... ) that Wal-Mart is trying to prevent a police officer—who was never a Wal-Mart employee—from receiving disability payments for injuries he suffered while trying to protect the public.
Here’s the story, according to Nassar and the Northwest Arkansas’ Morning News. Singleton, a former Pine Bluff, Ark., police officer, was patting down a suspect in 2003 when he was shot in the ankle and knocked unconscious from a blow to the head. He suffered neurological damage, and today is overly sensitive to light and suffers frequent migraines. He still has a bullet lodged in his ankle, making it difficult to walk or stand up for long periods of time.
Singleton is now retired but has spent the past five years waging a nasty court battle to receive disability benefits, which state workers’ compensation officials amazingly say he is not entitled to receive.
A state appeals court has overruled the workers’ comp commission, twice finding the commission wrongly excluded some evidence from consideration. Now the city of Pine Bluff has appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
I had to find out how this could be Wal-Mart's fault...(I think the Wal-Mart Derangement Syndrome is getting worse and worse)... and found:
So where does Wal-Mart come in? To flex it’s political and legal muscle, and push the Arkansas court to set a Wal-Mart-friendly precedent by denying him benefits. Both Wal-Mart and Tyson, Arkansas’ largest employers, “tendered friend-of-the-court briefs with the state Supreme Court this month arguing his claim should be denied.â€
So, a friend of court brief now makes it Wal-Mart's fault that the workers' comp commission keeps denying disability? OK...so why do they keep denying it?
Injured Officer Wins Claim
By John Lyon
Thursday, December 7, 2006 9:07 AM CST
Arkansas News Bureau • jlyon@arkansasnews.com
LITTLE ROCK — The state Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a Workers’ Compensation Commission decision that denied disability benefits to a Pine Bluff police officer who was shot in the line of duty and still has bullet fragments in his body.
Jimmy Singleton was shot in the head and left ankle by a suspect on March 1, 2003. Doctors who treated Singleton elected to leave five bullet fragments in his ankle, determining it would be more dangerous to remove them than to leave them in place.
Singleton received some medical benefits, but the Workers’ Compensation Commission denied his claim for disability benefits, saying he failed to prove the shooting left him physically impaired.
The Court of Appeals found that the commission erroneously rejected the opinion of a doctor who said Singleton’s injuries resulted in 8 percent physical impairment. The commission said it rejected the doctor’s opinion because it was based in part on non-objective evidence — i.e., the way Singleton walked.
The court reversed the commission’s decision and remanded the case to the commission “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.â€
A retired worker with 8% disability.
BTW, I didn't fix any DUmp links...they're all worthless sites anyway.
