Mississippi: Claimant’s Failure to Submit to Breathalyzer Does Not Necessarily Defeat Claim

In a split decision, a Mississippi appellate court held that an injured worker should not have been disqualified from receiving workers’ compensation benefits because he failed to submit to a post-accident breathalyzer test. The Court found that the Commission’s decision that denied benefits was not supported by substantial evidence where it appeared the injured worker remained—in substantial pain—waited for the breathalyzer technician to arrive at the employer’s premises for more than an hour and one-half following the incident, before angrily leaving the workplace and driving himself to a nearby hospital emergency department for treatment. The Court observed that once at the hospital, the worker consented to multiple drug tests—the hospital did not ask him to submit to a blood alcohol test—and he tested negative on each of them. Under the circumstances, the Court said the worker had not refused the test.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See McCall v. Sanderson Farms, 2017 Miss. App. LEXIS 420 (Aug. 1, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 36.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see