“Absolute Certainty” Is Not Required to Recover In Workers’ Compensation Case
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The North Carolina Court of Appeals has recently affirmed payment of the workers’ compensation claim to a stroke victim. The employee’s doctors had testified that his on-the-job automobile collision may have been a significant contributing factor to the stroke.
The motor vehicle collision occurred on May 13, 1995. The impact of the collision snapped the employee’s head forward and then back. He experienced pain in the base of his skull, the back of his neck and his left shoulder. Even though he was in pain, the employee continued to work and did not seek medical treatment.
On May 22, 1995, the employee experienced weakness in his left leg after using a blowtorch on a hot day. He was taken to the hospital where the stroke was diagnosed. As a result of the stroke, the employee suffers partial paralysis of his left arm and leg and walks with a cane.
This case is an example of the application of a long standing rule in North Carolina that a worker can receive workers’ compensation benefits even though his doctors are not absolutely certain that an on-the-job accident or work conditions caused injury to the worker. In this case, the doctor who first diagnosed the stroke, when questioned about whether the motor vehicle collision was the cause of the stroke, stated only that: “There was some association between the trauma of the accident and the stroke.” A neurologist who examined the employee testified that: “It remains entirely possible that the stroke occurred as a result of this injury” and that: “In light of the lack of other cerebrovascular risk factors, the automobile accident of May 13, 1995, might have been a significant contributing factor to the stroke.”
The Court of Appeals in this case, Mosely vs. Blythe Equipment Company, affirmed the award of the North Carolina Industrial Commission and found that the evidence was sufficient for the employee to recover. In discussing the sufficiency of the medical evidence concerning causation, the Court wrote: “Our Court has previously rejected any argument that causation must be established with ‘medical certainty.’ We require only ‘medical probability’…an expert may express the opinion that a particular cause ‘could’ or ‘might’ have produced the results indicating that the result is capable of preceding from the particular cause as a scientific fact, i.e., reasonable probability in the particular scientific field.”
The defendant/employer unsuccessfully argued that the evidence was not sufficient to support the finding that the stroke was caused by the motor vehicle collision. The defendant pointed out that both of the employee’s doctors admitted on the cross-examination that there could have been other causes of the plaintiff’s stroke.