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United States Steel Corp. v. McBrayer3/4/2005
employee was performing immediately before being injured. See G.UB.MK. Constructors v. Traffanstedt, 726 So. 2d 704, 708 (Ala. Civ. App. 1998) (noting that TTD "pertains to" the period during which an employee is healing and is unable to work). Second, a TTD award provides total monetary relief to an injured worker under the Act in that, unlike in the case of temporary partial disability, no reduction is made to the payable compensation based upon that worker's residual earning capacity. Compare Ala. Code 1975, § 25-5-57(a)(1) with § 25-5-57(a)(2)a. Finally, TTD benefits are temporary in nature in that they are payable only during a worker's recovery period; the Act envisions that permanent-disability benefits, if appropriate, be paid to an employee after he or she reaches the maximum level of medical recovery from a workplace injury that he or she may reasonably expect to achieve. See Traffanstedt, 726 So. 2d at 708 (indicating that TTD benefits are no longer payable when maximum medical improvement, or MMI, is reached).
With those principles in mind, we now turn to the employer's remaining three issues on appeal. First, we agree with the employer that under Alabama law an injured employee is not entitled to TTD benefits with respect to full-time work intervals during the recovery period. " n employee may not recover work[ers'] compensation during a material intervening time period of non-disability which transpires between periods of temporary total disability." Perkins v. G.C. Lingerie, Inc., 447 So. 2d 796, 797 (Ala. Civ. App. 1984). Conversely, " n employer is entitled to deduct the period of full-time employment from the period of temporary total disability." Mike Makemson Logging v. Colburn, 600 So. 2d 1049, 1051 (Ala. Civ. App. 1992). Although the employee repeatedly indicated during his trial testimony that he could not remember having returned to work on a full-time basis after his injury , the transcript of his deposition, which was admitted into evidence, indicates that the employee did return to work full-time for the employer on or around February 1, 2001; that he was off work from April 5, 2001, to July 23, 2001, as a result of surgery on his colon; and that the employee worked full-time for at least one month after July 24, 2001. The trial court's judgment, however, does not deduct any intervening periods of full-time employment from the employee's TTD award, nor does it allow the employer a credit against that award based upon those periods. The failure to make such a deduction, or allow such a credit, was erroneous.
The employer's contention that the employee is not entitled to TTD benefits for periods during which "unrelated" medical conditions prevented him from working is also well-taken. That principle was recognized by this court in Cooper v. Seven Rivers, Inc., 688 So. 2d 883 (Ala. Civ. App. 1997), in which we rejected an employee's argument that she was entitled to TTD benefits with respect to a particular period during which, the record indicated, she could not work because of a non-work-related condition, i.e., polymyositis. 688 So. 2d at 886.
In this case, as we have noted, the record reflects that the employee worked full-time immediately before undergoing colon surgery in April 2001 and worked full-time for at least one month after that surgery. Significantly, the trial court expressly determined that there was no substantial evidence of medical causation with respect to the employee's "hemorrhoid condition." The trial court's award of TTD benefits for the period during which the employee was off work because of his hemorrhoid surgery, therefore, is inconsistent with its conclusion that that surgery corrected a condition that was not attributable to a workpl
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