Trial Result : Marcelina Marchan v. Flying Food Group

Case Name: Marcelina Marchan v. Flying Food Group

Venue: IWCC Chicago/Arbitrator Cronin

Handling Attorney: Lead Attorney – Kurt V. Wakefield; Co-counsel – Brad Knell

Date of Accident: August 14, 2014

Potential Exposure: Approximately $147,058.55

Arbitrator Findings: Respondent wins on all issues; $0.00 in benefits due and owing to Petitioner

Potential Exposure:

This case involved an alleged workplace slip-and-fall that created $147,058.55 in potential liability broken down as follows:

• $81,115.45 in medical expenses including two hernia surgeries and multiple years of conservative treatment for both hernia and back conditions,

• $43,415.00 in permanency for an alleged hernia aggravation and lumbar sprain, and

• at least $22,528.10 to represent work missed due to temporary total disability

Because of our success at trial, our client has no liability for this alleged workplace accident.

Strategy:

We steadfastly denied this claim from the beginning. We were aware that under the law, it is the claimant who bears the burden of proving every element of her claim, and we intended to use the collective impact of numerous inconsistencies to cast doubt upon her story. We used the Petitioner’s own pre-accident medical records to show that her condition was essentially unchanged before and after the alleged slip-and-fall. We aggressively pressed the Petitioner on cross-examination to explain, causing her to contradict her own former statements and damage her own credibility. Through the testimony of the Employer’s Safety Manager, we were able to show the unlikelihood of the Petitioner falling in the way that she claimed. Further, we were able to show how the accident report that she signed indicated that she fell in a different position than that which she testified to, and that there were no witnesses to her fall, another statement that she contradicted at trial. By holding the Petitioner to every detail of her story, it did not hold up to scrutiny and she was unable to show her entitlement to any benefits from our client.

Significance:

There are several lessons that we as a firm learned from this victory about how to win at the IWCC, which can be a very hostile venue for Employers. These are the most important:

• Solid reporting procedures are crucial: Because our client had a clear, reliable, and well-known accident reporting procedure, the Petitioner was “locked in” to an early version of her story, including how she allegedly fell and who allegedly saw it. When she tried to change her story later, she was contradicting herself and damaging her own credibility.

• Details win cases: It may have been sufficient to show that Petitioner had a pre-existing hernia before her alleged slip-and-fall. But we went beyond and showed that her self-reported pain levels were unchanged, that she was referred to surgery prior to her alleged accident, and that her pain improved, deteriorated, and radiated throughout her legs seemingly at random throughout her treatment (and pressing her on each detail only created more contradictions).