Mississippi: Employee’s Kidney Disease Was Natural Consequence of Medication Taken for Earlier Admitted Injury to Lungs

A Mississippi appellate court affirmed an order of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Commission requiring an employer to pay for medical treatment related to a kidney condition caused by medication that an employee took for an admittedly compensable lung injury. In October 1997, the employee sustained an inhalation injury in a work-related accident. He was prescribed, among other medicines, amphotericin B. The court noted initially that when the primary injury is shown to have arisen out of and in the course of the employment, every natural consequence that flows from the injury likewise arises out of the employment, unless it is the result of an independent intervening cause attributable to the claimant’s own intentional conduct. The employee provided expert medical evidence that his kidney disease was caused by the amphotericin B, which had been prescribed for his lung condition. The Commission is the ultimate fact-finder and its decision was supported by substantial credible evidence.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. v. Harris, 2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 272 (May 19, 2015) [2015 Miss. App. LEXIS 272 (May 19, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.01 [10.01]

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