Missouri: Court Awards Total Benefits for Woman Trapped in Elevator

A 61-year old woman walks into an elevator at work.

The scenario may start to sound like a joke.  She works in customer service on the 5th floor in the employer’s building in Greene County, Missouri. The elevator falls a flight, and she isn’t rescued for an hour later.  It isn’t exactly the Tower of Terror.  The Commission unanimously affirms an award  that she  has PTSD and  can never work again. Conlan v Southwestern Bell, 2015 MO WCLR Lexis 109 (Lexis Advance), 2015 MO WCLR Lexis 109 (lexis.com) (Nov. 20, 2015).

There is no doubt before the accident that she has some sort of mental “condition.” She sustained minor injuries to her head, neck and wrist.

As in many cases, the experts cannot agree what the meaning of “condition” is.  The Commission disregards the opinion of the only forensic psychiatrist in the case who states  she does not have PTSD.  The Commission never indicates that her MMPI ever supported a finding of PTSD.   She had a prior panic disorder.  Now the Commission finds that she is mentally incapacitated from working at all. She has mistakenly convinced herself that she has a major concussion or some sort of traumatic brain injury and reports depression and panic attacks triggered by odd things like closed spaces, stores, and crowds, and chickens and cows.  She has refused to comply with treatment, one expert suggested.

The claimant’s expert psychologist based his opinion on DSM-IV which has been replaced by DSM-5.   The ALJ relies upon vocational opinion that a low GAF score renders claimant unemployable in the open labor market.  The American Psychiatric Association abandoned the GAF when it replaced DSM-IV with DSM-5 because the scale was not particularly reliable.

The employer asserted various legal defenses that she had not clocked in, that riding elevators was an integral to her job, and that anyone working or not working was subject to the risk of runaway elevators. The Commission rejected all of the legal arguments.

The case demonstrates classic problems with PTSD litigation and shows how loosely the diagnosis is tossed  around in comp cases.  This  case has lingered in the system for 9 years.  The accident occurred  in 2006  shortly after Missouri “reformed” its statute to put an end to so-called  “liberal” construction.

Source: Martin Klug, Huck, Howe & Tobin. Read Martin Klug’s Mo. Workers’ Comp Alerts.

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