The Illinois Appellate Court ruled Monday that a woman’s neck injury was not part of her overall workers compensation claim, reversing a circuit court ruling that ordered an insurer to cover the expanded claim.
As documented in Jacqueline Sumner v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, et. al., Jacqueline Sumner was injured while working for PlaceSmart/NOTS Logistics. This temporary employment agency sent her to work as a housekeeper at a Prairie Farms Dairy facility, where in 2020 she was walking on a slick surface when “machinery grabbed ahold of [her] shirt, thereby suddenly jerking her right shoulder.”
After a hearing, an arbitrator with the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission concluded that her right shoulder injury was causally related to the work accident but that pain reported in her neck, or “cervical spine,” “is not causally related to the work accident” and denied her request for coverage of medical bills and prospective medical treatment related to her neck.
On judicial review, the circuit court of St. Clair County, Illinois, confirmed that portion of the commission’s decision with respect to the claimant’s shoulder injury; however, it set aside the finding that an injury to Ms. Sumner’s cervical spine was not causally connected to her workplace accident and awarded benefits that included medical and prospective medical treatment.
The appeals court reversed the lower court’s finding regarding the cervical spine, ruling that Ms. Sumner failed to connect her neck pain to her 2020 injury. The court wrote that in 2021, before she aimed to add neck pain to her workers comp claim, her “symptoms had improved, and she did not provide evidence of ongoing pain during the period she was not receiving treatment.” She also did not mention neck pain after her work accident, according to court records. The appeals court order was filed under an Illinois court rule meaning it’s not a precedent binding on other cases.
This article was first published in Business Insurance
