Family Dollar Stores, Inc. v. Edwards

245 S.W.3d 181, 97 Ark. App. 156, 2006 Ark. App. LEXIS 855
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedDecember 13, 2006
DocketCA 06-583
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 245 S.W.3d 181 (Family Dollar Stores, Inc. v. Edwards) 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
Family Dollar Stores, Inc. v. Edwards, 245 S.W.3d 181, 97 Ark. App. 156, 2006 Ark. App. LEXIS 855 (Ark. Ct. App. 2006).

Opinion

Sam Bird, Judge.

Appellants Family Dollar Stores, Inc., and St. Paul Travelers Insurance appeal from a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Commission awarding benefits to appellee Barbara S. Edwards, who suffered a heart attack one day after she was robbed at gunpoint while working as a cashier at a Family Dollar Store. We affirm.

At a hearing before the administrative law judge, Edwards testified that she and Tara Hall were closing the Family Dollar Store in Wynne on March 26, 2004, when a man “came out from behind some clothes,” put a gun to her head, demanded money, and ordered her and Hall to “get on the floor.” Edwards said that the man, who was dressed in a ski mask, gloves, and a coat, crossed her arms and legs behind her and handcuffed them. He then took Edwards’s car keys and belongings from her purse and left the store.

Edwards said that she and Hall “laid there for a little while” until Hall’s grandmother began “banging” on the door, at which point Edwards and Hall “wiggled around and around” until they could get to the door. When they got there, they kicked the door open, and Hall’s grandmother helped Edwards and Hall to their feet. Edwards said that she was “exhausted” and “out of breath” by the time she got to the door, and she had to stand with her feet crossed for ten minutes while waiting for police to arrive. She explained that she had been “pulling and yanking . . . trying to get loose,” and that she “was hurting.” Police removed Edwards’s handcuffs when they arrived.

Edwards explained that she experienced discomfort or pain in her chest “right away” when the gun was pointed at her face. She also stated:

I was so frightened till it was just like (gasping), it scared me so bad. I mean, it . . . just . . . happened so suddenly]. When did I first begin worrying about I thought [sic] I might have something wrong with my heart? After I got out of the handcuffs and we were standing out on the front of the store. And I felt it, and I got real sick to my stomach. And... [it was] just like I was going to throw up, and just — it was just real sickening.

Edwards said that she went home around 11:00 p.m. on the night of the robbery, and she reported to the hospital around 12:00 noon the next day when her symptoms “didn’t go away.” She was diagnosed as having had a heart attack, was transported to Jones-boro by ambulance, and subsequently underwent surgery as the result of the heart attack.

Edwards’s primary care physician, Dr. Julie Dow, opined in a letter dated June 24, 2004, that Edwards’s “acute myocardial infarction was triggered by and largely due to the stress immediately [preceding the] armed [robbery] she witnessed.” In a letter dated September 28, 2004, Edwards’s cardiologist, Dr. Michael Isaacson, opined that the stress from a recent armed robbery “contributed to her myocardial infarction and hospitalization.” On June 15, 2005, Dr. Isaacson opined that the robbery “was indeed the major cause of her . . . myocardial infarction occurring the following day.” He explained in the letter that “[i]t has been demonstrated numerous times that an extreme emotional, and in this case even physical event, can precipitate a sudden myocardial infarction” and, in his opinion, “that is exactly what did occur.” During a subsequent deposition, Dr. Isaacson stated:

Basically, particularly in Ms. Edwards’ situation where somebody pointed a gun at her, you turn on the nervous system and basically scares the hell out of you. And that really does send a surge from the sympathetic nervous system, adrenaline, epinephrine, norepineph-rine, and all of those things that scare and fright type phenomenon, can cause a plaque that heretofore had been a stable plaque to rapture. And that’s how a lot of heart attacks occur. In fact, we think 70 percent of heart attacks occur on blockages under 50 percent. And there’s a trigger, such as a gun pointed at you that can trigger these things to rapture at a weakened site of the plaque and then clot forms just like putting a gun or a shotgun barrel in the mud and plugging it.
The emotional trauma that she was undergoing in the interim between ... having had the gun pointed at her head, understandably would cause a person emotional trauma, that built up over that period of time of 12 to 18 hours, that would lead someone to have a heart attack. I mean... you know, obviously it would be easier say if it happened right when she had the — but it does, I mean, you’ve got the fright and the stress and the come down, as you might say. After having the gun pointed at her head, she’s probably on quite an epinephrine high for, you know, I would say 24 hours after that phase.

During further questioning, Dr. Issacson stated:

As to whether it was more the emotional than the physical, I state probably more of the emotional than physical. I mean, I wasn’t there so I don’t know the extremes of the physical aspect. I know the emotional aspect was high from that.
As to whether the physical factors also contributed to her heart attack, I think those two go hand in hand. The physical aspect with the way things went down obviously enhanced the emotional aspect as well. So I don’t — they’re intertwined, I don’t know that I can tease those two apart.

Dr. Isaacson also reiterated his opinion that the physical and emotional aspects of the robbery were the “major precipitating cause” of the heart attack.

The law judge found that Edwards had sustained a compensable heart attack, the Commission affirmed and adopted the law judge’s opinion, and this appeal followed. When reviewing a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Commission, we view the evidence and all reasonable inferences deducible therefrom in the light most favorable to the findings of the Commission and affirm that decision if it is supported by substantial evidence. Wheeler Constr. Co. v. Armstrong, 73 Ark. App. 146, 41 S.W.3d 822 (2001). Substantial evidence is that relevant evidence which a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion. Id. The Commission’s decision should not be reversed unless it is clear that fair-minded persons could not have reached the same conclusions if presented with the same facts. Id.

Arkansas Code Annotated section 11-9-114 (Repl. 2002) states as follows:

(a) A cardiovascular, coronary, pulmonary, respiratory, or cere-brovascular accident or myocardial infarction causing injury, illness, or death is a compensable injury only if, in relation to other factors contributing to the physical harm, an accident is the major cause of the physical harm.
(b)(1) An injury or disease included in subsection (a) of this section shall not be deemed to be a compensable injury unless it is shown that the exertion of the work necessary to precipitate the disability or death was extraordinary and unusual in comparison to the employee’s usual work in the course of the employee’s regular employment, or, alternately, that some unusual and unpredicted incident occurred which is found to have been the major cause of the physical harm.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
245 S.W.3d 181, 97 Ark. App. 156, 2006 Ark. App. LEXIS 855, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/family-dollar-stores-inc-v-edwards-arkctapp-2006.