SPECIFIC INJURY OR GENERAL DISABILITY?
In a recent and important case, the South Carolina Court of Appeals has re-affirmed an important, but often overlooked right to recover compensation for loss of an inured worker’s earning capacity. In the case of Simmons v. City of Charleston, the Court of Appeals re-emphasized its holding in the prior case of Brown v. Owen Steel Co. Brown allows workers to recover under the South Carolina Workers Compensation Act for permanent loss of their earning capacity when they have suffered an injury to one part of body, but that injury also affects them in other physical and/ or mental ways that can be proven to the satisfaction of the workers compensation commissioner hearing the case.
In Simmons, a firefighter was bitten by a spider on his foot when he was putting on his boots. While his injury was to his foot, that injury caused him to have other problems with other parts of his body. The Court held that he was allowed to be compensated for his loss of earning capacity that he suffered when his other body parts were affected by his foot injury, even though technically he had only initially hurt his foot. The Court called this compensation for a "general disability." What this law means to injured workers is that they may be entitled to more than they would have been entitled if the Commission only considered their original injury site.
Generally, when an injured worker has suffered an accident on the job, his or her right to recover compensation is limited to compensation for injury to that particular body part. It can therefore make a big difference in the amount of compensation that an injured worker receives if he is able to proceed under the general disability statute. Consequently, an experienced workers’ compensation attorney should ask his or her client whether the injury to his client is affecting any other part of the client’s body or mind, in which case, the attorney may be able to convince the commissioner who hears the case to make an award for the injured workers inability to earn the same wages that he did before the injury and is now totally or partially disabled.
