Workers’ Compensation – Occupational Disease – Repetitive Motion – Expert’s Testimony – Knowledge of Job Duties – Prior Injury – Disability

Bentley v. Revlon, Inc. (Lawyers Weekly No. 14-16-0358, 19 pp.) (Chris Dillon, J.) Appealed from the Industrial Commission. N.C. App. Unpub.

Holding: When plaintiff’s expert witness neither remembered plaintiff’s job duties nor had them recorded in his notes, the Industrial Commission could find that his opinion – that plaintiff’s job caused her repetitive motion conditions – was speculative.

We affirm the Commission’s denial of both plaintiff’s occupational disease claim and her claim for additional benefits related to a 1995 compensable injury.

The Commission did not err by failing to reopen the evidence to admit videos depicting plaintiff’s job duties. The Commission’s decision to deny plaintiff’s claim did not rest upon any failure by the Commission to understand the repetitive nature of plaintiff’s job duties, but rather upon plaintiff’s failure to present medical testimony from an expert witness who demonstrated an understanding of plaintiff’s job duties sufficient to form a credible opinion concerning the plausibility that such duties caused plaintiff’s upper extremity conditions.

With regard to plaintiff’s 1995 injury, the Commission found that, after May 1998, plaintiff worked for roughly 12 years without incident prior to seeking treatment from Dr. Tuttle in December 2010 and, moreover, that such treatment pertained to plaintiff’s alleged occupational disease. These findings support the Commission’s grounds for denying plaintiff’s claim for total disability benefits, namely, that any total disability for purposes of the present case was a product of plaintiff’s upper extremity conditions – with respect to which plaintiff failed to meet her burden in proving the existence of an occupational disease – and not a product of her 1995 injury.

Affirmed.