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Hobbs v. Alabama Power Co.3/24/2000
Patricia Hobbs sued Alabama Power Company ("APCo"), seeking workers' compensation benefits and alleging bad-faith failure to pay workers' compensation benefits. She later amended her complaint to include a fraud claim. She appeals from a summary judgment entered for APCo on her fraud claim and made final pursuant to Rule 54(b), Ala. R. Civ. P. We affirm.
I. Facts
APCo employed Hobbs as a meter reader. While working on January 3, 1996, she stepped in a hole; the accident resulted in her experiencing pain in her back and legs. Hobbs's treating physician, Dr. J. Michael Grabowski, diagnosed her injury as lumbar strain and placed her on restricted duty. Because Hobbs was not satisfied with the treatment Dr. Grabowski and two other physicians gave her, she chose Dr. Perry Savage from APCo's list of approved physicians, and she first saw him in April 1996. Dr. Savage diagnosed spinal stenosis, a degenerative spinal disease. Dr. Savage determined that Hobbs's lumbar strain resulted from her on-the-job injury but that her spinal stenosis was not related to her on-the-job injury. At that point, APCo agreed to pay for Hobbs's medical treatment for as long as she suffered from lumbar strain.
On May 10 and 13, 1996, APCo's health manager informed Hobbs that APCo's workers' compensation insurance would cover her expenses related to her on-the-job injury , so long as there was a relationship between her back pain and her accident, but, because her condition was degenerative, she should file any additional medical expenses with her personal health-insurance carrier. On December 2, 1996, Dr. Savage stated that Hobbs's on-the-job injury had aggravated her pre-existing spinal stenosis, but that the aggravation was temporary and transitory in nature. On December 5, 1996, he further stated that Hobbs should have recovered from her January 3, 1996, injury by that time and that she continued to suffer from only spinal stenosis, a condition that he had previously determined not to be related to her on-the-job injury. Dr. Savage recommended that Hobbs have decompression surgery. Although Dr. Savage said that surgery eventually would have been necessary to correct the spinal stenosis, he also stated that Hobbs's on-the-job injury made the surgery necessary sooner than it would have been if she had not had the injury.
As a result of this diagnosis, APCo's medical director concluded, based upon Hobbs's treatment records and consultations with Dr. Savage, that Hobbs's on-the-job injury did not cause her spinal stenosis and that surgery for spinal stenosis was not compensable from a workers' compensation standpoint. On December 11, 1996, APCo's health manager wrote a letter to Dr. Savage informing him that Hobbs's future medical treatment and appointments should be covered by her personal health-insurance carrier because APCo's workers' compensation insurance would no longer cover her medical expenses. On January 20, 1997, Dr. Savage restricted Hobbs to light-duty work. On January 23, 1997, APCo placed Hobbs on "family medical leave" because it could not accommodate the work restrictions Dr. Savage had given Hobbs.
Following Dr. Savage's recommendation for surgery, APCo's health manager again informed Hobbs that APCo's workers' compensation insurance carrier would not pay for her surgery because, it said, the injury did not arise out of her employment, and the health manager recommended that she submit her claim to her personal health-insurance carrier. APCo's health manager also told Hobbs that APCo would not compensate her for personal leave after the surgery. In her deposition, Hobbs testified that she could not afford to be absent from work without compensation and therefore dec
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