Hinton v. National Lock Corp.

879 S.W.2d 713, 1994 Mo. App. LEXIS 993, 1994 WL 262412
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 14, 1994
DocketNo. 19172
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 879 S.W.2d 713 (Hinton v. National Lock Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hinton v. National Lock Corp., 879 S.W.2d 713, 1994 Mo. App. LEXIS 993, 1994 WL 262412 (Mo. Ct. App. 1994).

Opinion

PARRISH, Chief Judge.

Lois Hinton (claimant) appeals from a final award of the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (the commission) denying her claim for workers’ compensation. This court affirms.

Claimant worked for National Lock Corporation (the employer) from June 15, 1976, until June 1990. Claimant worked a night shift for the first two years then began working a day shift. About 1982 she began working at a table assembly station performing a bolt subassembly process. She performed that function sitting at a table. Her job was to drive a small pin into a lock bolt assembly with the metal butt of a screwdriver. In an eight-hour day, she would “put out at least two thousand or twenty-four hundred” subas-semblies. She was paid at a piece-work rate based on her production.

On May 13, 1987, she experienced excruciating pain in her arm while performing her routine duties. She reported her injury to her supervisor, Curt Butcher. At the end of her shift, she sought treatment from a chiropractor, Dr. Bennett. Dr. Bennett treated her for a week following her injury. She then consulted Dr. Walton, the company doctor. He scheduled her for physical therapy. It was not successful. Dr. Walton referred claimant to Dr. Kim.

Dr. Kim hospitalized claimant June 9, 1987, for a myelogram. He diagnosed her injury as a ruptured disc and a deteriorated disc. The next day Dr. Kim performed surgery to remove the ruptured disc. Claimant explained, “He did it with microsurgery to my neck here and he said he scraped the ruptured disc and the deteriorated disc, he took a bone off my hip or bone scraping.” She saw Dr. Kim a final time on September 3, 1987. She returned to work after that date.

Claimant filed a claim for medical benefits from her health insurance carrier. She explained:

Q. [by. claimant’s attorney] Did you turn this in on your health insurance?
A. Well, I went in and talked to Sue Wheatley, she was the representative at that time and told her that I may have to have surgery. This is when I was going to Missouri Delta for the physical therapy, and I told her, I said, you know, I had to go to Dr. Kim and I didn’t know what he would say and she said well, okay. And so when my bills came in they just naturally sent them to Jefferson Pilot and sent them in.
Q. Who is Jefferson Pilot?
A. That’s our insurance out there. I’m pretty sure it’s Jefferson Pilot.
Q. That’s your health and accident carrier?
A. Yes, that I pay for. Well, they pay partial.

When claimant returned to work in September 1987, she resumed the same job she performed before. She performed those tasks until June 25, 1990. She explained what occurred on June 25:

Well, I was sitting there working with bad parts and I knew they were bad and I reported it to my supervisor who at that time was Bill McDonald, and he told me, he said, well, do what you can. Make as many as you can and so then I went to him in his office and I said I can’t do it. I started hurting too bad and so he said okay, we will just pull them and so he took me off of that job and put me on another job where I was using my hand to pull down a — I’m not sure what the name of that job is, but it’s a lever that you pull a lever by hand and it would press two pieces together and you press one into the other. I had to do that with my right hand. I told Gary, I said, I can’t do this, [715]*715so then he put me — Gary McDonald [1]said well, put me on this other job and that was the last day that I worked. I worked on three or four different jobs that day.

Claimant received workers’ compensation benefits after June 25, 1990, for the injury she sustained on that date.

On October 25,1990, claimant filed a claim for compensation based on the injury she sustained May 13, 1987. The employer and its insurer denied the allegations in claimant’s claim for compensation and further alleged that the claim was “barred by Section 287.430, Revised Statutes of Missouri, 1969.”2

The commission, adopting the findings of fact and conclusions of law of the Administrative Law Judge who conducted claimant’s hearing, found that claimant was reinjured June 25, 1990; that the June 25 incident “was filed as a separate claim ... and has previously been settled by a compromise settlement agreement.” It further found:

[Claimant’s] claim for compensation for her May 13, 1987 injury was filed with the Division of Workers’ Compensation on October 25, 1990. The employer-insurer’s answer was filed with the Division [of Workers’ Compensation] on September 5, 1991 and affirmatively alleged that the [claimant’s] claim for compensation was barred by the statute of limitations under Section 287.430 RSMo.

The commission concluded:

The threshold issue in the [claimant’s] case is whether the [claimant’s] claim for compensation was filed within the time allowed by law. The [claimant’s] claim alleges that she had a “series of accidents, or, in the alternative, an incidence of occupational disease” on May 13, 1987. The [claimant’s] claim for compensation, however, was not filed until October 25, 1990.
There are two relevant sections of Chapter 287 on the statute of limitations issue. For “accidents” Section 287.430 RSMo., applies, but for an incidence of oceupational disease, Section 287.063.3 RSMo., is controlling.
Looking first at Section 287.430, it is clear that if the [claimant’s] claim is classified as an “accident”, the statute of limitations will bar her claim. There was no evidence indicating that any workers’ compensation benefits had been paid by the employer to toll the statute. Therefore, since no benefits were paid, the maximum time allowed for filing the claim under Section 287.430 is three years after the date of the accident. Thus, the last day for the [claimant] to file a claim for an “accident” [sic] under Section 287.430 was May 13, 1990. There is no dispute in this case that the [claimant’s] claim for compensation was not filed with the Division until October 25, 1990.

The commission then explored whether claimant experienced “an ‘occupational disease’ under Section 287.067,” saying:

The statute of limitations for occupational disease cases is modified by Section 287.-063.3, which provides in part that: “the statute of limitations referred to in Section 287.430 shall not begin to run in cases of occupational disease until it becomes reasonably discoverable and apparent that a compensible [sic] injury has been sustained”.

It concluded, “Although the [claimant] may have been able to prove that she had a ‘job related accident’ under the Wolfgeher case, her injury clearly does not fall within the more narrowly defined category of occupational disease. Wolfgeher v. Wagner Carthage [Cartage] Service, Inc., 646 S.W.2d 781 (Mo.App. [Mo.] 1983).”

The commission further held that even if the injury could be classified as an incidence of occupational disease, claimant would be barred from recovery by the statute of limitations, concluding, “[E]ven if the ...

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Bluebook (online)
879 S.W.2d 713, 1994 Mo. App. LEXIS 993, 1994 WL 262412, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hinton-v-national-lock-corp-moctapp-1994.