Marta Vandall v. Aurora Healthcare, LLC d/b/a Allenbrooke Nursing & Rehab

401 S.W.3d 28, 2013 WL 1749420, 2013 Tenn. LEXIS 426
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedApril 24, 2013
DocketW2011-02042-SC-R3-WC
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 401 S.W.3d 28 (Marta Vandall v. Aurora Healthcare, LLC d/b/a Allenbrooke Nursing & Rehab) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Marta Vandall v. Aurora Healthcare, LLC d/b/a Allenbrooke Nursing & Rehab, 401 S.W.3d 28, 2013 WL 1749420, 2013 Tenn. LEXIS 426 (Tenn. 2013).

Opinions

OPINION

JANICE M. HOLDER, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

in which GARY R. WADE, C.J., and CORNELIA A. CLARK, and SHARON G. LEE, JJ„ joined. WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., J., filed a dissenting opinion.

An employee fell while working for her employer and sustained a shoulder fracture. The employer contends that the injury did not arise out of her employment and was an idiopathic fall. The trial court held that the employee sustained the burden of proving that her injury arose out of her employment. We affirm the trial court’s judgment.

Factual and Procedural Background

At the time of trial, the plaintiff, Ms. Marta Vandall, was sixty years of age. She graduated from Hillcrest High School in Memphis and then attended Christian Brothers College for one year, where she studied marketing and economics. She later obtained her nursing degree at the Hopkinsville Community College in Kentucky.

After obtaining her nursing degree, Ms. Vandall worked in a series of nursing or nursing-related positions for a number of different employers. Although Ms. Vandall had been employed previously by Allenbrooke Nursing and Rehab (“Allen-brooke”) in 2001, she began working as an “MDS [multiple data set] coordinator” for Allenbrooke in July 2009. One of Ms. Vandall’s responsibilities as an MDS coordinator was to perform a full assessment at the time of a patient’s admittance to determine the patient’s physical, emotional, and psychological status. She then completed the multiple data set with the information she gleaned from the assessment. The completed data set was sent to State of Tennessee and federal government agencies. As the MDS coordinator, she also prepared a care plan based on the results of the patient’s assessment to ensure that the patient received the necessary care.

Ms. Vandall was also required to go to the patients’ rooms and obtain the patients’ medical charts from Allenbrooke’s three nursing stations. She testified that she usually made three or four trips per day from her office to each of the three nursing stations. Ms. Vandall fell on August 15, 2009, while walking to a nursing station on one of her regular trips. Other nurses came to assist her, and she was taken by ambulance to the emergency room of a local hospital. At the hospital, Ms. Vandall was diagnosed with a fractured right shoulder, a bruised left knee, and a bruised left great toe. Ms. Vandall filed a complaint for workers’ compensation benefits in the Chancery Court for Shelby County, and a trial was held on January 31, 2011.

During her direct examination, Ms. Van-dall was asked to describe the floors at Allenbrooke. Ms. Vandall testified that “[t]he floors at Allenbrooke are the same linoleum tile floors that were there in 2001. There are some chipped tiles that I noted. They buff them every day. So they’re very shiny.” She noticed that there was no floor maintenance crew on the day she fell. She then was asked whether she had observed substances spilled on Allen-[30]*30brooke’s floors, to which she responded: “There are substances spilled on that floor constantly.” She stated that elderly patients sometimes spit on the floor, that urine is sometimes on the floor, and that there are medication and water spills on Allenbrooke’s floors. Ms. Vandall testified that she fell close to a “med cart” just past the nurses’ station where patients “come up and get their medicine at the med cart.” She described some of the liquid medications given to patients as “very sticky.” With respect to the August 15, 2009 fall, Ms. Vandall testified that as she passed the medicine cart near the central nurses’ station “[M]y right — the ball of my right foot, I know, stuck to the floor, because I was unable to lift it to carry through with my gait.... And when my foot stuck, I immediately started falling forward.” After she fell, she did not look to see what caused her foot to stick to the floor because she was “so dazed and in pain.”

On cross-examination, Ms. Vandall readily conceded she could not identify the substance on the floor that caused her to fall and stated that she did not reach down to feel around on the floor. She admitted that she was not looking down at the time of her fall, so she saw nothing on the floor. She also admitted on cross-examination that “[ajnything that [she] would state was on the floor that caused [her] to fall would be strictly speculation on [her] part.”

Two witnesses testified at trial on behalf of Allenbrooke. Mr. Bobby Meadows, Executive Director of Allenbrooke, testified that he was not present at the time of Ms. Vandall’s fall. However, he returned to Allenbrooke when he received a telephone call informing him of the incident. At the time he arrived at Allenbrooke, Ms. Van-dall was still sitting on the floor near where she had fallen. Mr. Meadows asked Ms. Vandall how she fell. Ms. Vandall did not know what caused her fall but she thought she may have tripped over her feet. Mr. Meadows testified that Ms. Van-dall was wearing a pair of “Croc” shoes without socks that appeared to be too big for her feet. When Mr. Meadows mentioned to Ms. Vandall that her shoes were too big, she agreed. Mr. Meadows testified that Allenbrooke has a policy prohibiting employees from wearing Croc-type shoes and that the policy is strictly enforced. If an employee is observed wearing Croc-type shoes, he or she is sent home to change shoes. If an employee repeatedly violates the policy, Mr. Meadows testified that he would take disciplinary action.

Mr. Meadows also testified that he inspected the area where Ms. Vandall had fallen to determine if there was any visible cause for her fall. He felt the floor in the area where Ms. Vandall had fallen, and he and several Allenbrooke nurses checked the floor by placing a level on it to see if there were any irregularities. He and the nurses also visually inspected the area and determined there was nothing on the floor that might have caused Ms. Vandall’s fall. Mr. Meadows contradicted Ms. Vandall’s testimony concerning the distribution of medication at the “med cart” located at the nurses’ station. He testified that “we do not give residents medication at the nurses[’] station. We give them in their room with privacy and with dignity.”

Ms. Felecia Thompson, a unit manager and supervisor at Allenbrooke, testified that she witnessed Ms. Vandall’s fall as she was walking toward Ms. Vandall in the hallway. According to Ms. Thompson, Ms. Vandall “was walking towards me from another hall, and she stumbled and went down.” After Ms. Vandall was transported to the hospital, Ms. Thompson inspected the area where Ms. Vandall had fallen and saw nothing on the floor that could [31]*31have caused the fall. In particular, Ms. Thompson testified that she saw no liquid or any other substance on the floor. Ms. Thompson, like Mr. Meadows, testified that Allenbrooke has a policy against employees wearing Croc-type shoes because “they don’t sit correctfly] on your feet. They flop off. And they cause a hazard for you to fall.”

Due to her shoulder injury, Ms. Vandall was not able to return to Allenbrooke for some period of time. Ms. Vandall testified that when she ultimately attempted to return to work she was informed that she had been terminated. In February 2010, Ms. Vandall was employed by a new employer, Accredo Medco Pharmacy, as a “specialty nurse.” Ms. Vandall testified that she was paid approximately $62,000 per year in her new position, approximately $2000 more than she was paid in her prior position at Allenbrooke.

Ms. Vandall’s treating physician was Dr.

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Bluebook (online)
401 S.W.3d 28, 2013 WL 1749420, 2013 Tenn. LEXIS 426, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/marta-vandall-v-aurora-healthcare-llc-dba-allenbrooke-nursing-rehab-tenn-2013.