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SECOND INJURY FUND v. STEPHENS6/24/1998
The Second Injury Fund appeals a decision of the Workers' Compensation Commission holding it liable for a 20 percent wage-loss disability awarded to Billy Stephens, a thirty-four-year-old welder with an eighth-grade education. We affirm the Commission's decision.
The parties do not dispute the facts in this case. Mr. Stephens was assigned a 10 percent permanent physical impairment rating as a result of a 1987 compensable back injury and two 1988 surgeries related to the injury. In 1993 he began working for Trailmobile, Inc., where he suffered another compensable back injury in April 1995 while pulling a coupler section onto a welding table. This injury resulted in surgery the next month. Trailmobile and its insurance carrier, Home Indemnity Company, accepted and paid a 2 percent permanent impairment rating following the 1995 surgery. Mr. Stephens returned to work for Trailmobile in a light-duty capacity and continued working until January 1996, when he sustained a noncompensable back injury that also required surgery.
A hearing before the administrative law judge was held in October 1996 on the issues of wage-loss benefits and Second Injury Fund liability. Mr. Stephens testified that after his 1995 return to work he had difficulty with the physical demands of various job assignments. The law judge awarded him wage-loss benefits
in the amount of 20 percent, and apportioned the sum to be paid twenty percent equally by Trailmobile and the Second Injury Fund. The Workers' Compensation Commission reversed the decision regarding apportionment, finding that all wage loss should be borne by the Second Injury Fund. In doing so, the Commission rejected the Fund's argument that Mr. Stephens had failed to prove that the major cause of his wage-loss disability was his last compensable injury. On appeal, the Second Injury Fund does not challenge the finding that Mr. Stephens's wage-earning capacity has been reduced by 20 percent. It contends, however, that the wage-loss disability award is contrary to our workers' compensation statutes.
[1, 2] The requirements that must be met in order for the Second Injury Fund to have liability are as follows:
First, the employee must have suffered a compensable injury at his present place of employment. Second, prior to that injury the employee must have had a permanent partial disability or impairment. Third, the disability or impairment must have combined with the recent compensable injury to produce the current disability status.
Mid-State Construction Co. v. Second Injury Fund, 295 Ark. 1, 5, 746 S.W.2d 539, 541 (1988). In Second Injury Fund v. Furman, 60 Ark. App. 237, 242, 961 S.W.2d 787, 790 (1998), we addressed the Fund's liability under Act 796 of 1993, which has mandated strict construction of our workers' compensation laws. We stated that the new Workers' Compensation Act did not change the following guidelines for Second Injury Fund liability, now codified as Ark. Code Ann. ยง 11-9-525(b)(3) and (4) (Repl. 1996):
(3) If any employee who has a permanent partial disability or impairment, whether from compensable injury or otherwise, receives a subsequent compensable injury resulting in additional permanent partial disability or impairment so that the degree or percentage of disability or impairment caused by the combined disabilities or impairments is greater than that which would have resulted from the last injury, considered alone and of itself, and if the employee is entitled to receive compensation on the basis of combined disabilities or impairments, then the employer at the time of the last injury shall be liable only for the degree or percentage of disability or impairment which would have
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