• Court: Missouri Labor and Industrial Relations Commission
• Attorney: Samantha N. Benjamin-House

McAnany, Van Cleave & Phillips Senior Shareholder Samantha Benjamin-House recently prevailed on a Labor and Industrial Relations Commission Review of a Final Award that granted the employer a significant reduction in benefits as a result of the employee’s safety violation.  This was a case of first impression involving the 2005 amendment to the safety violation statute, R.S.Mo. § 287.120.5, which increased the 15% penalty to a range of 25% to 50%.  The Commission further affirmed the award of the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) that allowed the employer to take a credit for medical benefits paid against the permanent partial disability awarded, which reduced the permanent partial disability (PPD) benefits by an additional $5,246.96 on top of the 37.5% penalty applied directly to the PPD.

In this case, the employee worked as a mechanic at a starch manufacturing plant for over forty years.  The employee was injured while attempting to change a belt on a blower. After shutting down the power to the blower, he failed to identify and eliminate a secondary energy source, pursuant to company policy, so that the sheaves in the blower continued to move.  Instead, the employee shoved a broom handle into the sheaves to stop the rotation and suffered severe injury to his hand when the broom handle broke and his hand was pulled into and around the belt pulley system.

At trial, Ms. Benjamin-House successfully proved all six elements of the affirmative defense of the employee’s failure to obey a safety rule under R.S.Mo. § 287.120.5, which resulted in a 37.5% reduction in the employee’s benefits.  Those elements include: (1) the employer must have adopted a rule for the safety of employees; (2) the rule must be reasonable; (3) the employee failed to obey the rule; (4) the employee’s injury was caused by his or her failure to obey the rule; (5) the employee had actual knowledge of the rule; and (6) the employer had, prior to the injury, made a reasonable effort to cause his or her employees to obey or follow the rule so adopted for the safety of the employees.

The ALJ found that the statute does not provide guidance in determining the percentage to apply if a penalty violation is found.  Here, the employee’s conduct was more than a minor safety violation, but did not rise to the level of egregious.  Thus, the ALJ found that a split of the minimum and maximum reductions available would be appropriate.

Further, the ALJ found that the reduction in benefits applied to all benefits, including medical benefits already paid by the employer, citing, Nolan v. Degussa Admixtures, Inc., 246 S.W.3d 1 (Mo.App. 2008).  In this case the Employer had paid $13,991.00 in medical benefits, which resulted in a credit of $5,246.96 that the ALJ ordered to be taken from the additional benefits awarded.  The Commission affirmed this decision in whole.