Manson v. City of Shreveport

• Decision Date: 03 April 1991
• Docket Number: No. 22221-CA,22221-CA
• Citation: 577 So.2d 1167
• Parties: Joy W. MANSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 1167

577 So.2d 1167

Joy W. MANSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF SHREVEPORT, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 22221-CA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana Second Circuit.

April 3, 1991.

Writ Denied May 27, 1991.

William T. Allison, Shreveport, for plaintiff-appellant.

Lawrence K. McCollum, Shreveport, for defendant-appellee.

Before SEXTON, NORRIS and VICTORY, JJ.

SEXTON, Judge.

The plaintiff, Joy Manson, appeals the trial court judgment which denied her claim for worker's compensation benefits, penalties, and attorney fees. The plaintiff was injured on August 26, 1983, while in the course and scope of her employment with the defendant, City of Shreveport. However, the trial court rejected her claim for worker's compensation, finding the plaintiff was no longer disabled on February 24, 1987, when her employment was terminated by the defendant. We affirm.

On August 26, 1983, the plaintiff had been employed for four years as a secretary for the Shreveport Fire Department. On that date, while in the course and scope of her employment, she fell down a flight of stairs. There is no dispute that the plaintiff was injured in the accident, that she suffered headaches and was unable to work for nearly a year. There is also no dispute that, during that year, the city paid plaintiff full worker's compensation benefits.

On August 1, 1984, the plaintiff returned to work for the city as a senior secretary in the Department of Human Resources. The plaintiff apparently continued to suffer from headaches, some of which were severe enough to cause her to miss work. From August 1, 1984, until September 10, 1986, the plaintiff was compensated by the city with two-thirds of her usual salary for the days she missed work due to headaches. The city stopped paying these benefits on September 10, 1986. The city did, however, continue to pay plaintiff's medical bills.

According to the testimony of city representatives, the city stopped paying plaintiff for the days she missed due to headaches when it was determined that plaintiff was earning at least 90 percent of the wages she had earned prior to the accident, making her ineligible for supplemental earnings benefits. This testimony is somewhat confusing as the record reflects that plaintiff was earning more money immediately upon her return to work than she had been prior to the date of the accident. She was thus never statutorily entitled to supplemental earnings benefits. LSA-R.S. 23:1221(3). It appears this remuneration was pursuant to an informal contractual arrangement between the plaintiff and the city.

Although plaintiff was no longer being compensated for the days she missed due to her headaches, she nevertheless continued to be employed by the city until February 24, 1987. Plaintiff's absences between September 10, 1986, and February 24, 1987, were credited against her sick leave, annual leave, etc. When plaintiff had exhausted her various leave allowances, the city terminated her employment for what it termed her abandonment of her job. The plaintiff, of course, asserted that her alleged abandonment of her job was actually caused by the headaches stemming from her August 26, 1983, accident.

The plaintiff's lawsuit sought temporary total disability benefits from the date her employment was terminated, February 24, 1987. Following a five-day bench trial, which ended on July 21, 1988, the trial court ordered both sides to file briefs. By written opinion dated January 16, 1990, the trial court rejected plaintiff's demands. The trial court found that plaintiff had abandoned her employment in order to move to Texas for social reasons, rather than because of any compensable disability. The court found that plaintiff had exaggerated her injuries and misrepresented her ability to perform her job functions. In short, the trial court made a credibility determination and found the plaintiff had failed to prove she was still suffering from any disability. A judgment rejecting plaintiff's demands was signed on February 1, 1990.

The only issue on appeal is whether the trial court was in error in finding the plaintiff failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that she remained disabled on February 24, 1987, due to her work-related accident of August 26, 1983.

Although the Louisiana Worker's Compensation Act, LSA-R.S. 23:1021, et seq., is to be construed liberally in favor of the claimant, the plaintiff's burden of proof is not relaxed. The burden remains on the plaintiff to prove her claim by a preponderance of the evidence. Prim v. City of Shreveport, 297 So.2d 421 (La.1974); Burnes v. Wizard Enterprises, Inc., 543 So.2d 616 (La.App. 2d Cir.1989).

The finding of disability within the framework of the worker's compensation law is a legal rather than a purely medical determination. Barry v. Western Electric Company, Inc., 485 So.2d 83 (La.App. 2d Cir.1986), writ denied, 487 So.2d 441 (La.1986); Calhoun v. Fireman's Fund Insurance Companies, 437 So.2d 900 (La.App. 2d Cir.1983). Thus the question of disability must be determined by reference to the totality of the evidence, including both lay and medical testimony. Crawford v. Al Smith Plumbing & Heating Service, Inc., 352 So.2d 669 (La.1977); Jackson v. Georgia Casualty and Surety Company, 513 So.2d 530 (La.App. 2d Cir.1987), writ denied, 515 So.2d 448 (La.1987).

Ultimately, the question of disability and, more specifically in regard to the instant case, whether plaintiff's headaches remain substantial enough to constitute a disability for worker's compensation purposes, is a question of fact. See, Barry v. Western Electric Company, Inc., supra; Latiolais v. Home Insurance Co., 454 So.2d 902 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1984), writ denied, 460 So.2d 610 (La.1984). Accordingly, we note that an appellate court may not set aside a trial court's findings of fact in the absence of manifest error or unless they are clearly wrong. Thus, reasonable evaluations of credibility and reasonable inferences of fact should not be disturbed on appeal. Rosell v. ESCO, 549 So.2d 840 (La.1989); Arceneaux v. Domingue, 365 So.2d 1330 (La.1978). Such deference to a trial court's factual findings and credibility determinations applies as well in worker's compensation cases. Ducote v. J.A. Jones Construction Company, 471 So.2d 704 (La.1985); Culp v. Belden Corporation, 432 So.2d 847 (La.1983).

We find the trial court's factual finding that plaintiff was no longer disabled on the date her employment was terminated, which finding was based predominantly on the trial court's credibility determinations, is supported by the record and is not clearly wrong. ¹

Testimony revealed that prior to the date of termination, plaintiff may have been abusing the city's sick leave policy and the special arrangement she had with the city regarding compensation for absences associated with her headaches. On one occasion, Candace Higginbotham, the assistant director of the Department of Human Resources, saw the plaintiff at a New Year's Eve party after the plaintiff had called in sick both New Year's Eve day and the preceding day. The plaintiff did not deny being at the party, but claims she had felt obligated to attend, and she testified, without corroboration, that she left immediately after vomiting at the dinner table. On another occasion, the plaintiff was discovered to have been at a golf tournament, although allegedly only for a brief time to register her boyfriend, on a day she had been too ill to go to work.

We also note that the plaintiff seemed to require less medical, therapeutic, and pharmaceutical treatment for her headaches after her termination from employment with the city. This, too, supports the trial court's conclusion that plaintiff may have been exaggerating her injuries and misrepresenting her ability to work. Her employment was terminated on February 24, 1987, and she moved to Dallas sometime in March 1987. From that time until trial, the plaintiff only saw a doctor for treatment of her headaches twice. On each occasion, in November 1987 and in May 1988, the plaintiff returned to Shreveport to see her treating neurologist, Dr. Nabil Moufarrej. Following her accident, until she left Shreveport, plaintiff had previously sought treatment from Dr. Moufarrej every two to three weeks or two to three months.

The plaintiff also required no hospitalization for her headaches after she moved to Dallas. Conversely, while she was in Shreveport and still employed by the city, the plaintiff had been taken to the hospital for treatment of her headaches on numerous occasions. Keith Lehr, with whom the plaintiff had lived for two and a half years while she was employed by the city, testified that he took the plaintiff to the hospital three to four times when her headaches were especially severe. The plaintiff's daughter, Julia Manson, testified that she took her mother to the hospital five to ten times while plaintiff worked for the city, in addition to other occasions when the aforementioned Mr. Lehr and a Ms. Covern, the plaintiff's next-door neighbor, had taken her to the hospital.

A corresponding decrease in plaintiff's physical therapy treatments was also seen; she went from 73 days of treatment between 1985 and February 1987, to no treatments after her move to Dallas. A decline in plaintiff's medication was also noted, as her prescriptions for pain medication decreased after her move to Dallas. All of these factors would seem to be an implication either that...