Cooper Standard Automotive, Inc. v. Kelley

337 S.W.3d 542, 2009 Ark. App. 552, 2009 Ark. App. LEXIS 696
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedSeptember 2, 2009
DocketCA 09-43
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 337 S.W.3d 542 (Cooper Standard Automotive, Inc. v. Kelley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cooper Standard Automotive, Inc. v. Kelley, 337 S.W.3d 542, 2009 Ark. App. 552, 2009 Ark. App. LEXIS 696 (Ark. Ct. App. 2009).

Opinion

ROBERT J. GLADWIN, Judge.

Appellants Cooper Standard Automotive, Inc., and St. Paul Travelers Insurance Company appeal the decision of the Workers’ Compensation Commission dated September 23, 2008, adopting and affirming the decision of the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) dated April 4, 2008. Appellants contend that substantial evidence does not support the Commission’s determination that cervical-fusion surgery was reasonably necessary in connection with appellee’s compensable injury and that the penalty imposed for late payment of benefits was excessive. We affirm.

This claim originated when appellee Melanie Kelley worked for appellant Cooper Standard Automotive as the new job coordinator in its engineering department on February 7, 1999. On that date, appellee sustained a compensable neck and back injury after being hit in the head by a steel-core bar that weighed over four hundred pounds. Ultimately, appellee 12returned to work for Cooper for some nine months until she was laid off. She also applied for and drew twenty-six weeks of unemployment-insurance benefits. On August 27, 2001, appellee underwent a cervical fusion at C5-6, which was performed by Dr. Richard Jordan, for which benefits were paid.

This claim became the subject of prior hearings that .related to appellee’s healing period, compensability of her back injury, and her entitlement to a proposed L5/S1 percutaneous diskectomy. In an opinion dated May 7, 2003, the ALJ found that appellee’s healing period had not ended and found her back condition to be a com-pensable injury. At that time, the ALJ awarded appellee temporary-total disability from May 15, 2000, through a date yet to be determined.

On February 23, 2006, a hearing was held in El Dorado, Arkansas, which addressed the following issues:

1) Whether appellee was entitled to additional temporary-total-disability benefits.
2) Whether appellee was entitled to additional permanent-partial-disability benefits.
3) Whether appellee had sustained wage loss in excess of her permanent-anatomical-impairment rating.
4) Enforcement of the Commission’s prior orders.
5) Controversion and attorney’s fees.

On May 9, 2006, an opinion was issued as a result of the February 23, 2006 hearing. The ALJ found that appellee had reached the end of her healing period on August 4, 2003, and that she was entitled to temporary-total-disability benefits from May 15, 2000, through August 4, 2003. The ALJ also found that appellee sustained permanent impairment of fourteen percent to the body as a whole as a result of her compensable injury and that she had ^suffered wage loss in the amount of eighty-six percent over and above her permanent-anatomical rating for a total impairment of 100%. An appeal followed the May 9, 2006 opinion, and on March 7, 2007, the Commission affirmed and modified the ALJ’s May 2006 order.

The Commission opinion filed March 7, 2007, affirmed the ALJ’s finding that ap-pellee had reached maximum-medical improvement on August 4, 2003, and affirmed the determination that appellee had sustained a fourteen-percent permanent impairment to the body as a whole as a result of her February 1999 compensable injury. The Commission, however, modified the ALJ’s finding of an eighty-six percent wage-loss disability over and above appel-lee’s permanent-anatomical impairment. The Commission found that appellee was only entitled to wage loss in the amount of twenty-eight percent over and above her permanent-anatomical-impairment rating of fourteen percent to the body as a whole, for a total impairment of forty-two percent.

On March 21, 2007, while the period for appealing the Commission’s decision was pending, appellee underwent a second cervical-fusion surgery, this time at the C4-5 level. Dr. Richard Jordan performed the surgery, and he testified that the surgery was an attempt to relieve neck pain, pain and numbness in appellee’s left arm, severe muscle spasms, and migraine headaches. He further testified that, in his opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the cervical-fusion surgery was related to the original injury suffered by appellee in February 1999. Part of his opinion was based upon appellee’s improvement after the surgery.

|4No one appealed the Commission’s order filed March 7, 2007. It is also undisputed that the appeal time for that March 7, 2007 order ran on April 9, 2007, and that the award became final fifteen days thereafter on April 24, 2007. The parties agree that on April 30, 2007, approximately six days after the award became final, appellants paid $46,857.07 in indemnity benefits to appellee and $5,085.60 in attorney’s fees. Appellee contended that the amounts received on April 30, 2007, were incorrect and late. She requested a finding by the Commission of the correct amount appellants should have paid on or before April 23, 2007, and a determination that she was entitled to a twenty-percent penalty pursuant to Arkansas Code Annotated section ll-9-802(c) (Repl.2002), due to the failure of appellants to timely pay the award outlined in the Commission opinion filed March 7, 2007. The Commission was also asked to determine whether the March 21, 2007 surgery was reasonable and necessary.

The Commission found that appellants did not correctly pay benefits pursuant to the March 7, 2007 Commission order and that they still owed appellee $7,541.74, which included interest, in temporary-total-disability benefits as of May 9, 2006; that appellants owed $42,346.85 in permanent-partial-disability benefits that was due on or before April 2.3, 2007; that ap-pellee was entitled to a twenty-percent penalty on the-total amount that appellants owed; that appellee’s cervical fusion on March 21, 2007, was reasonable, necessary, and related to appellee’s February 7, 1999 compensable injury; and that appellee’s attorney was entitled to a maximum statutory attorney fee, reserving the issue of unpaid attorney’s fees as a result of the May 7, 2003 order. From that order comes this appeal.

1 ^Typically, on appeal to this court, we review only the decision of the Commission, not that of the ALJ. Daniels v. Affiliated Foods Sw., 70 Ark.App. 319, 17 S.W.3d 817 (2000). In this case, the Commission affirmed and adopted the ALJ’s opinion as its own, which it is permitted to do under Arkansas law. See Death & Perm. Total Disab. Trust Fund v. Branum, 82 Ark.App. 338, 107 S.W.3d 876 (2003). Moreover, in so doing, the Commission makes the ALJ’s findings and conclusions- the findings and conclusions of the Commission. See id. Therefore, for purposes of our review, we consider both the ALJ’s order and the Commission’s majority opinion.

In appeals involving claims for workers’ compensation, this court views the evidence and all reasonable inferences deducible therefrom in the light most favorable to the Commission’s decision and affirms the decision if it is supported by substantial evidence. See Kimbell v. Ass’n of Rehab Indus. & Bus. Companion Prop. & Cas., 366 Ark.

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Grubbs v. S. Personnel Mgmt.
2025 Ark. App. 358 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2025)
Kelley v. Cooper Standard Automotive, Inc.
386 S.W.3d 570 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2011)
United Farms, Inc. v. Gist
374 S.W.3d 23 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2009)

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337 S.W.3d 542, 2009 Ark. App. 552, 2009 Ark. App. LEXIS 696, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cooper-standard-automotive-inc-v-kelley-arkctapp-2009.