Barnes, Christopher v. Vanderbilt University Medical Center

2021 TN WC 229
CourtTennessee Court of Workers' Compensation Claims
DecidedSeptember 21, 2021
Docket2021-06-0176
StatusPublished

This text of 2021 TN WC 229 (Barnes, Christopher v. Vanderbilt University Medical Center) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Court of Workers' Compensation Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barnes, Christopher v. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 2021 TN WC 229 (Tenn. Super. Ct. 2021).

Opinion

FILED Sep 21, 2021 01:12 PM(CT) TENNESSEE COURT OF WORKERS' COMPENSATION CLAIMS

TENNESSEE BUREAU OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION IN THE COURT OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION CLAIMS AT NASHVILLE

CHRISTOPHER BARNES, ) Docket No. 2021-06-0176 Employee, ) v. ) State File No. 800146-2021 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY ) MEDICAL CENTER, ) Judge Joshua Davis Baker Employer. ) ) ____________________________________________________________________

EXPEDITED HEARING ORDER ____________________________________________________________________

This first standoff over a COVID-19 infection is reminiscent of a quote from Stephen King’s The Stand, a horror story about a global pandemic: “The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there . . . and still on your feet.” This Court is relieved that Mr. Barnes is here, on his feet, and able to tell his story.

At a September 1, 2020 expedited hearing, Mr. Barnes requested temporary disability benefits and alleged that he contracted COVID-19 from cleaning the hospital rooms of discharged COVID-19 patients. The Court finds he did not present sufficient evidence that he is likely to prevail on his claim for temporary disability benefits.

Claim History

Mr. Barnes, a janitor at Vanderbilt, alleged he contracted COVID-19 from cleaning hospital rooms of discharged COVID-19 patients shortly after Christmas. Until that point, Vanderbilt had accommodated his doctor’s request that he not clean those rooms because of his partner’s high-risk pregnancy. After cleaning the rooms for two days, Mr. Barnes’s symptoms emerged on December 30. Two days later, he tested positive for COVID-19.

Both Mr. Barnes’s testimony and his supervisors’ Rule 72 declarations described the circumstances surrounding his potential exposure. The week that his symptoms developed, he cleaned rooms for two days “where COVID-19 patients had been staying after those patients were discharged.” He followed Vanderbilt’s safety protocol: he washed

1 his hands and used sanitizer before entering and after leaving, and wore personal protective equipment (PPE), “including gloves, a gown, eye protection, and a proper mask.” His manager maintained that no other employee reported an infection from cleaning these rooms.

But Mr. Barnes said he did not go anywhere other than work during the week before his symptoms manifested (December 23-30, 2020). His partner shopped for groceries; he worked from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. and slept until noon; and his partner never got sick, implying that his exposure occurred outside his home.

Mr. Barnes said he told his supervisor, Antonio Dyson, from the outset that his exposure happened at work. Mr. Dyson sent him directly to Occupational Health without offering a panel of physicians. When Mr. Barnes told staff there that his illness was work- related, they directed him back to Mr. Dyson to complete paperwork. When he again sought help initiating a claim, Mr. Dyson told him to figure it out himself. In his declaration, Mr. Dyson denied saying this but confirmed that Mr. Barnes reported a work injury. He acknowledged, “Employee did report to me on or about January 3…that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and that he thought he might have contracted it at work.”

Through a policy outside its workers’ compensation program, Vanderbilt provided medical treatment for Mr. Barnes with its Occupational Health Clinic and paid him lost wages until February 27, 2021.

Teresa Overton, Vanderbilt’s workers’ compensation manager, explained how Vanderbilt’s COVID-19 policy is unrelated to its workers’ compensation program and did not trigger notice of a claim. She said Vanderbilt had “a policy where it paid any employee who tested positive . . . or who had to be quarantined . . . for a period of time that would allow for recovery . . . regardless of whether the employee’s need to be out of work due to COVID-19 was work-related or not.” Moreover, she contended that he “never followed VUMC’s procedure for making a workers’ compensation claim, which required him to complete a report on VUMC’s online veritas system.” So, she did not receive notice of a work-injury allegation until Mr. Barnes filed his petition for benefit determination in March. She denied the claim over lack of medical causation and notice.

When Mr. Barnes stopped receiving wages on February 27 and felt stymied from initiating a workers’ compensation claim, he filed a petition on March 11 for temporary disability benefits. Vanderbilt had stopped paying his wages after a nurse at Occupational Health suggested on February 22 that he could work four hours per day.

However, that same medical record also suggested Mr. Barnes was developing pneumonia from his COVID-19 illness. It documented the following impression from his chest x-ray: “Patchy airspace opacities in the left lower lung could represent sequelae of Covid infection versus developing bacterial pneumonia. Follow-up chest x-ray in 4-6

2 weeks is recommended to ensure resolution.” In fact, Mr. Barnes testified he developed “COVID pneumonia” shortly after that, and Occupational Health referred him to a specialist, who restricted him from working again until at least June.

Yet Mr. Barnes did not present a clear picture of his pneumonia diagnosis, its treatment, or his inability to work, as he did not file any medical records of treatment that occurred after early March.

Meanwhile, Vanderbilt maintained Mr. Barnes is not owed temporary disability benefits because its supervising physician at Occupational Health, Dr. Ana Nobis, determined his illness was not work-related. Dr. Nobis said that assuming he wore PPE appropriately and experienced no “known high-risk exposure,” “the risk of Mr. Barnes contracting COVID-19 [at work] was less than, and certainly not greater than, his risk of contracting COVID-19 in the community at the height of the pandemic.” She acknowledged that “improper use [of PPE] could have potentially increased risk.” But she concluded, “I cannot say that Mr. Barnes’ COVID-19 infection resulted primarily from his work at VUMC versus from exposure outside the workplace.”

For his part, Mr. Barnes said Dr. Nobis never treated him, never examined him physically, and never questioned him about the circumstances of his exposure or the events leading up to his symptoms’ onset.

While grateful for medical treatment and wages, Mr. Barnes expressed frustration over three points: his supervisor did not accept his report of a workers’ compensation claim; he did not receive lost wages after February, when he was still disabled from working; and Vanderbilt did not permit him an opportunity to select a physician from a panel. Fortunately, Mr. Barnes recovered and no longer needs medical attention.

Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law

Mr. Barnes need only present sufficient evidence at this stage that he is likely to prevail at a final hearing. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-239(d)(1) (2020); McCord v. Advantage Human Resourcing, 2015 TN Wrk. Comp. App. Bd. LEXIS 6, at *9 (Mar. 27, 2015).

He requested temporary disability benefits from February 27 until he could return to work in June. Vanderbilt contended Mr. Barnes is not owed those benefits because he did not give proper notice of his injury and because he cannot prove his exposure to COVID-19 occurred at work, particularly given Dr. Nobis’s opinion.

3 Notice

Under Workers’ Compensation Law, an employee “shall, immediately upon the occurrence of an injury . . . give or cause to be given to the employer who has no actual notice, written notice of the injury[.]” Tenn. Code Ann. § 50-6-201(a)(1).

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Related

§ 50-6
Tennessee § 50-6
§ 50-6-102
Tennessee § 50-6-102(14)(A)
§ 50-6-201
Tennessee § 50-6-201(a)(1)
§ 50-6-239
Tennessee § 50-6-239(d)(1)

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2021 TN WC 229, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barnes-christopher-v-vanderbilt-university-medical-center-tennworkcompcl-2021.