Alabama Appellate Watch : Blog Published by Lightfoot Franklin & White : Alabama Litigation Lawyer & Attorney : Appellate, Alabama Supreme Court (Supreme Court of Alabama)

A nursing home assistant was injured while working. Her employer refused to provide workers’ compensation benefits. Two doctors had determined that her injuries preexisted the workplace accident, and that her primary insurer should therefore pay for any needed treatment. The trial court disagreed. It found that the employee had suffered a work-related injury and ordered the employer to provide medical benefits. The employer petitioned the Court of Civil Appeals for a writ of mandamus.

The appellate court found the lower court’s order insufficient to support mandamus review. That order “did not contain detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law,” as required by § 25-5-88 of the workers’ compensation laws. This made review of the lower court’s decision “difficult if not impossible.” The appellate court noted that it had “repeatedly” reversed trial-court judgments, and denied attendant mandamus petitions, in cases where trial-court orders were similarly wanting. It did so again here. Denying the employer’s petition, the Court of Civil Appeals ordered the lower court to enter an order that set out the detail that § 25-5-88 requires. Once the lower court entered that order, the employer could “again petition . . . for a writ of mandamus.”

The appellate court decided to treat the petition as an appeal from a final judgment. Under two recent decisions — Fluor Enterprises, Inc. v. Lawshe, 16 So. 3d 96 (Ala. Civ. App. 2009) and Wix Corp. v. Davis, 945 So. 2d 1040 (Ala. Civ. App. 2005) — the court explained,

a petition for an extraordinary writ that errantly [sic] challenges the correctness of a final, appealable judgment entered in a workers’ compensation action will nonetheless support this court’s review of the pertinent judgment by appeal.

The court then outlined when this might occur:

To be sure, a mere compensability determination that awards no relief, other than directing an employer to allow medical treatment, is not a “final judgment” that is subject to appellate review, but is instead reviewable by an appellate court only by a petition for a writ of mandamus. However, as Fluor Enteprises indicates, the rule is now emerging that when a trial court goes further, and awards medical benefits and temporary-total-disability benefits in addition to determining compensability, the trial court has rendered a final judgment that is susceptible to appellate review.

(Citation omitted) (emphasis in original). The court acknowledged that this emerging rule was “in tension” with some of its older precedent, but decided to “follow the reasoning of Fluor Enterprises,” which, it noted, was a recent and unanimous decision.  The court also noted (as "undisputed") that the plaintiff had not yet "reached maximum medical improvement so as to render ripe for decision the issue of [his] entitlement, if any, to permanent-disability benefits . . . ."

The court then turned to the merits of the (now) appeal. Contrary to the requirements of Ala. Code § 25-5-88, the trial court had failed to include statements of fact and conclusions of law in its “summary” decision. The Court of Civil Appeals therefore reversed the decision and remanded the case to the circuit court.

One interesting aspect of the opinion is the court's finding that a "gentleman's agreement" between attorneys that no appearance was necessary provided a sufficient basis for the trial court to conclude that the default judgment was not as a result of the defendant's own culpable conduct.

The circuit court ultimately affirmed summary judgment granted to the defendant co-employees after the default was set aside, finding that a fire extinguisher was not a "safety device on a machine" and was not covered by Ala. Code sec 25-5-11(c)(2).

An employee sued his employer for workers’ compensation benefits. Before deciding the core questions of whether the worker was disabled and what benefits he might be owed, the circuit court ordered the employer to provide the worker with a panel of physicians under Ala. Code § 25-5-77(a) (1975). This order was entered on March 29, 2007.

The trial court entered its (nominally) final decision on October 19, 2007. The court found that the worker was permanently disabled and awarded him “all past due . . . and future benefits.” The court did not specify the amount of this award.

The employer then filed two cases in the Court of Civil Appeals. It filed a petition for writ of mandamus on November 20, 2007, to review the March 29 order concerning the panel of physicians. Then, on November 29, 2007, it filed an appeal from the October 19 judgment awarding benefits.

The Court of Civil Appeals turned both of these aside. The mandamus petition, it noted, was filed well outside the 42-day period in which such petitions are considered presumptively timely under appellate Rules 21(a)(3) and 4(a)(1). In such a case, Rule 21(a)(3) requires the petitioner to show “good cause” for the late filing. The employer had not made this showing. The appellate court recognized that the “passage of time, without more” does “not necessarily, by itself,” condemn a late petition to dismissal. Here, however, there was “more.” The worker had been prejudiced by the employer’s delay in filing. Specifically, the worker was forced to “seek, obtain, and presumably pay for his [own] pain-management treatment” in the relevant period. The appellate court also indicated that the issues raised by the mandamus petition were encompassed by the employer’s direct appeal. The employer thus had “an opportunity for review by appeal,” which was “another factor to consider in determining whether good cause exists for allowing an untimely mandamus petition.” The Court of Civil Appeals thus denied the petition as late.

The employer’s direct appeal, for its part, was dismissed as being from a non-final judgment. Recall that the trial court’s October 19 order — which awarded the worker disability benefits — had “fail[ed] to specify a sum certain for” those benefits. This made the judgment non-final. The appellate court explained:

Where the amount of damages is an issue . . . the recognized rule of law in Alabama is that no appeal will lie from a judgment which does not adjudicate that issue by ascertainment of the amount of those damages.

Accordingly, the October 19 order “was not a final judgment that [would] support an appeal.” The Court of Civil Appeals dismissed the employer’s appeal.

(The employer had also couched its direct appeal alternatively as a petition for mandamus. The Court of Civil Appeals rejected this tack. Because the employer would have an adequate remedy by appeal, once a final judgment was entered, mandamus would not lie. The court thus denied the alternative petition.)