The Arkansas Court of Appeals denied workers' compensation benefits Wednesday to an in-home caregiver who was injured in a car crash on the way to her clients' residence.
Judge Kenneth Hixson wrote for a unanimous panel that the "critical inquiry" for the court in deciding whether Barbara Black of Mount Ida was entitled to benefits was whether she was "performing employment services" at the time of the crash.
Black and her husband were assigned as in-home caregivers to two "severely disabled brothers" living in rural Yell County in January 2012 for Hot Springs-based First Step Inc., according to the court's opinion.
Although Black's job duties included cooking meals for her clients, she was not expected to purchase groceries for them and was not performing employment services, the court wrote.
"While, as the [workers' compensation] commission noted, her actions in bringing food to [her clients] may have been generous and admirable, these actions were clearly not part of her job duties," Hixson wrote.
"In the present case, [Black] was not required by her employer to provide groceries for her clients, and she acknowledged that on the day of the accident her clients' father had not asked her to stop and purchase groceries," the judge wrote.
About 6:30 a.m. May 2, 2012, Black and her husband stopped at a gas station and picked up groceries to cook meals for their clients later in the day. After the couple left the gas station, their pickup was forced off the road by another vehicle, rolled and landed upside down in a ditch.
Black, who was 54 at the time of the crash, was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital in Hot Springs, where doctors found she had fractured her neck and back and suffered a concussion. Her husband, Daniel Black, who also was 54 at the time, was not injured in the crash, according to an Arkansas State Police crash report.
Barbara Black has not worked since the crash, according to court documents.
The Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission ruled 2-1 to deny Black benefits, stating that the evidence showed she was traveling to work at the time of the crash and not engaged in "employment services."
But Commissioner Philip Hood wrote in a dissenting opinion that he would award benefits because "[a]bsent [Black]'s shopping trip, she would not have been able to perform the work duty of cooking for the clients."
Sherri McDonough, Black's attorney, appealed the commission's ruling. She argued in filings with the appeals court that though Black was not at the clients' home, she was performing employment services at the time of the crash.
Black was also scheduled to work at the time of the crash, but had been asked not to go to the clients' home so early, McDonough wrote.
Melissa Wood, an attorney for First Step Inc. and its insurance carrier, wrote in court filings that Black "had not done one single thing required by or to the benefit of her employer" the morning of the crash.
Black testified that she turned in time sheets for hours that she was not at her clients' home, which Wood said amounted to fraud and "is most certainly not something that would benefit her employer."
Attorneys for both sides did not return phone messages seeking comment.
Metro on 05/31/2014