A Texas steel manufacturer has to pay an injured worker $30,000 in back wages after an appeals court upheld a jury finding that the company fired the employee for filing a workers’ compensation claim.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Appellate District of Texas found that there was “more than a scintilla of evidence to support” the worker’s retaliation claim.
He was placed on restrictions following back injury
Arthur Palmer worked for Pittsburg Steel in the shear department. On Dec. 21, 2018, Palmer bent over to pick up several sheets of metal weighing 30 pounds each off of a pallet. As he raised back up with the sheets in hand, his back popped. The noise of the pop was followed by pain in his lower back that radiated down his left leg.
Palmer notified his supervisor and the company’s vice president, who told Palmer to go see the doctor. The doctor took an x-ray and diagnosed Palmer with a bulging disc.
The vice president submitted a workers’ compensation claim to Pittsburg Steel’s insurance carrier stating that Palmer “injured his back while … removing material from rack to table.”
On December 26, the company received a workers’ compensation work status report that said Palmer could return to work with restrictions, including no kneeling, bending, pushing, pulling or twisting.
It was light duty work in name only
Palmer was transferred from the shearing department to the mobile home production department for light duty work to accommodate his restrictions. However, the supervisor of the mobile home production department later testified that his department was “just like the other departments, but to (management), because I use lighter stuff and I don’t do as much of the big heavy stuff, I guess they consider it a light duty department.”
While the materials may have been lighter, Palmer was still required to bend over and reach down into barrels to get the parts he needed to do his work. In short, his medical restrictions weren’t actually being accommodated.
Throughout the several months Palmer worked in the mobile home production department, he was still being treated for his work-related injury. Pittsburg Steel received bills for Palmer’s medical treatments in January, February and March 2019.
Mistake he was fired for occurred almost a year before injury
Palmer was fired on March 15, 2019, just before a scheduled MRI. His exit interview form indicated he was terminated, but the comment section was left blank.
Pittsburg Steel’s insurance carrier asked why Palmer was fired because, depending on the reason, the company could be required to pay him temporary total disability benefits. The company’s vice president responded that Palmer was let go because he made mistakes that resulted in the production of 3,800 wrong parts. There was only documentation for one mistake, however. That mistake occurred in February 2018, long before his injury, and only mentioned 750 parts that were produced incorrectly.
In a jury trial, Palmer admitted that he did get written up for the 750 parts and was told that another mistake would result in termination. He also testified that there was a mistake involving 3,000 parts he made in January 2019, but his supervisors at the time said he wasn’t at fault. They told him that the problem was that a wrong part was placed on the machine by another employee. Palmer testified that the supervisors told him he wouldn’t be held responsible for those parts.
Management claimed it didn’t know about open comp claim
During the trial, the supervisors and Pittsburg Steel’s owner and vice president testified. None of them could recall precisely when the 3,000-part mistake was made. The owner said it happened in January 2019 and he fired Palmer on the spot, which was why there was no paperwork on the incident. Meanwhile, the supervisors and vice president said it occurred in March. The vice president said there should have been paperwork documenting the mistake, but that paperwork was never admitted as evidence.
Further, the owner, vice president and supervisors all claimed they weren’t aware that Palmer’s workers’ compensation case was still open when he was fired despite emails between the vice president and insurance company that proved otherwise. There was also other documented evidence that the supervisors and owner were also aware of the open workers’ compensation claim.
The jury found that the evidence proved that Pittsburg Steel retaliated against Palmer. It awarded him $27,265 in lost wages, which the trial judge bumped up to $30,920 after adding pre-judgment interest.
‘More than scintilla of evidence supports jury’s retaliation finding’
On appeal, Pittsburg Steel argued that the jury erred in its ruling for Palmer.
The appeals court disagreed, finding “that the jury’s verdict was supported by legally and factually sufficient evidence.”
In ruling in Palmer’s favor, the appeals court said that a worker claiming retaliation isn’t required “to show that a workers’ compensation claim was the sole motivation for the termination” but must “prove a causal link between the filing of workers’ compensation claim and subsequent discharge.”
The evidence detailed that:
- Palmer suffered an injury at work
- he filed a workers’ compensation claim in good faith
- he was placed on restrictions that weren’t completely followed despite his complaints
- Pittsburg Steel fired Palmer before a scheduled MRI after receiving three medical bills and a work restriction notice.
“Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Palmer, we conclude that there was more than a scintilla of evidence to support the jury’s findings of retaliation,” the appeals court said. “Even when viewing the evidence in a neutral light, we find that the jury’s verdict was not so contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong and unjust.”
