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Cousin v. Slidell Memorial Hospital9/26/2003
Plaintiff, Curtis Cousin, claims that he was injured in the course and scope of his employment with Slidell Memorial Hospital. The Office of Workers' Compensation (OWC) judge, Robert Varnado, Jr., denied Cousin's claim after finding that Cousin failed to carry his burden of proof that an accident occurred, and Cousin appealed. For the following reasons, we affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Cousin claims that several hours into his shift on August 15, 2001, while using a stripping machine to remove wax from the floors at Slidell Memorial Hospital, he injured his neck. According to Cousin's trial testimony, he was tilting the stripping machine to get some wax up when the machine lurched forward, jerking him. He felt a pop in his neck with immediate onset of neck and shoulder pain. He continued to perform his duties and did not immediately report an accident or injury to his supervisor because he did not think anything of it. Some time later, he was having a "slight pain" in the area where he felt the pop, so he approached a nurse. He did not tell the nurse what had happened, but instead requested Tylenol for a headache. He then went back to work stripping the floors, but was only able to work approximately thirty more minutes because he began experiencing a stiffening and pain in the area where he had felt the pop. He became scared that he was having a heart attack because his brother had died at a young age from heart problems, so he went to look for his supervisor, Gilbert Rhodes. While looking for Rhodes, he ran into nurse Christell Olivo and told her that he was scared and asked her about the pain running down his left side. Cousin testified that, "to his knowledge," he told Olivo that the pain had begun while he was operating the stripping machine. Olivo then escorted him to the emergency room and presented him to the triage nurse, Barbara Boles. Cousin initially testified that he was scared that he was having a heart attack and could not recall what he told Boles about his pain or how it began. Later, he testified that he did not know why he had been checked out for heart problems in the emergency room because he did not tell anyone that he thought he might be having a heart attack. He admitted on cross-examination that as far as he knows he did not tell Boles that he had been stripping floors when the pain began, but contradicted his earlier testimony by stating that he told Boles that he felt a pop in his neck, which caused the onset of the pain.
Cousin testified that Rhodes came to see him once while he was in the emergency room. Cousin testified that Rhodes stuck his head in the curtain and asked him how he was doing, he replied that he was fine, and Rhodes left. He said that he did not tell Rhodes what had happened because Rhodes did not ask him. Cousin testified that he did not ask to fill out an accident report that night because that was Rhodes' job , not his. Cousin admitted that he had been instructed to fill out a First Report of Injury immediately after an incident that caused pain, and in fact had filled out such a report immediately after a previous work-related injury, but did not do so in this case because "it wasn't no pain. Wasn't that great of pain."
When Cousin was discharged from the emergency room at five o'clock the following morning, he went home without speaking to anyone about the accident or how it occurred. Cousin claimed that he called Michael Parker the next morning to report the accident. He stated that he told Parker about the stripping machine, but not the pop in his neck, and Parker told him to fill out a report.
Cousin went to see Dr. Clinton Sharp, his family physician, on August 17, 2001, two days after the all
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