Rose v. JJS Trucking

• Decision Date: 10 August 2022
• Docket Number: 2022-UP-325,Appellate Case 2019-001357
• Parties: Samuel Rose, Employee, Respondent, v. JJS Trucking, Uninsured Employer, and Chris Thompson Services, Upstream Employer, Bridgefield Casualty Insurance Company, and South Carolina Uninsured Employers' Fund, Carrier, all of whom are Appellants.
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals

Samuel Rose, Employee, Respondent,
v.
JJS Trucking, Uninsured Employer,

and Chris Thompson Services, Upstream Employer, Bridgefield Casualty Insurance Company, and South Carolina Uninsured Employers' Fund, Carrier, all of whom are Appellants.

No. 2022-UP-325

Appellate Case No. 2019-001357

Court of Appeals of South Carolina

August 10, 2022

THIS OPINION HAS NO PRECEDENTIAL VALUE. IT SHOULD NOT BE CITED OR RELIED ON AS PRECEDENT IN ANY PROCEEDING EXCEPT AS PROVIDED BY RULE 268(d)(2), SCACR.

Heard June 9, 2022

Appeal From The Workers' Compensation Commission

Timothy Blair Killen, of Holder, Padgett, Littlejohn & Prickett, LLC, of Mt. Pleasant, Amy V. Cofield, of Amy V. Cofield Attorney at Law, of Lexington, and Lisa C. Glover, of South Carolina State Accident Fund, of Lexington, for Appellant South Carolina Uninsured Employers' Fund.

1

Kirsten Leslie Barr, of Trask & Howell, LLC, of Mt. Pleasant, for Appellants Chris Thompson Services, LLC and Bridgefield Casualty Ins. Co. Stephen Benjamin Samuels, of Samuels Reynolds Law Firm LLC, of Columbia, for Respondent.

PER CURIAM.

Three entities appeal Samuel Rose's award from the appellate panel of the Workers' Compensation Commission. Those entities are Chris Thompson Services, Bridgefield Casualty Insurance Company, and the South Carolina Uninsured Employers' Fund.

Appellants' arguments can be grouped into two main issues. The first is whether this claim's procedural history barred the commission from addressing Rose's entitlement to benefits. The second is whether substantial evidence supports the commission's awards of future medical benefits and temporary total disability (TTD) benefits. We affirm. The claim is not barred and the record supports the award.

ALLEGED PROCEDURAL BAR

Appellants argue the commission did not have the authority to address Rose's entitlement to benefits because a series of "conclusions of law" in a single commissioner's 2014 order are the law of the case. The 2014 order found Rose failed to comply with section 42-1-560 of the South Carolina Code (2015)-commonly known as the "third-party statute"-and that Rose forfeited his workers' compensation claim by not providing the commission and the parties with proper notice of a related tort suit. Rose appealed that order. A panel of this court reversed.

We respectfully disagree with Appellants' argument. The only sensible reading of the 2014 order is that it dismissed the claim based on the argument that Rose violated the third-party statute. Appellants point us to conclusions of law summarily stating Rose is not entitled to benefits as of the date he filed a counterclaim in the tort suit under sections 42-9-10, -20, -30, -210, -260, and 42-15-60 of the South Carolina Code (2015). Those are, respectively, the statutes on total disability, partial disability, scheduled recovery, payments made by an employer when they were not due, temporary total disability, and medical treatment.

2

Nothing in the 2014 order suggests the commission adjudicated that Rose had no viable claim because he did not prove a claim under these particular statutes. The order's entire thrust was that Rose had no claim under these statutes because (in the commission's view) the third-party statute precluded Rose from having any claim at all. There is no doubt about this. The order announced Rose "failed to satisfy the [statute's] mandatory requirements" and "[a]s a result, [Rose] is not entitled to additional benefits under the Act." A previous panel of this court correctly determined that this view was wrong and that it was an abuse of discretion for the commission to blind itself to Rose's attempt to cure the lack...