APPEALS - RECORD. Where the compensation judge made only one finding on the ultimate issue on appeal and failed to make findings regarding essential elements of the application of Minn. Stat. § 176.101, subd. 1(i), and where the record on appeal was incomplete, precluding meaningful appellate review, we vacate and remand for reconsideration.
Compensation Judge: Jerome G. Arnold
Attorneys: Robert C. Falsani and Jennifer A. McEwen, Falsani, Balmer, Peterson & Balmer, Duluth, Minnesota, for the Appellant. Gregory R. Broos and Erica A. Weber, Brown & Carlson, P.A., Minneapolis, Minnesota, for self-insured Respondent Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., admin’d by Claims Mgmt. & Consulting, Inc. Jerome D. Feriancek, Thibodeau, Johnson & Feriancek, Duluth, Minnesota, for Respondents MedSpeed, LLC, and Accident Fund Group.
Vacated in part and remanded in part.
PATRICIA J. MILUN, Chief Judge
The employee appeals the compensation judge’s denial of his claim for temporary total disability benefits. We vacate and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The employee, Jason Danielson, sustained two admitted work-related injuries to his low back. He suffered a back injury on November 20, 2010, while working for the self-insured employer, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart admitted liability for the injury and benefits were paid. The employee had no ongoing restrictions from the admitted work injury. On September 27, 2016, while working for the employer, MedSpeed, the employee suffered another back injury. He underwent surgery on October 10, 2016, remained off of work, and began receiving rehabilitation services from a qualified rehabilitation consultant (QRC) from the Department of Labor & Industry Vocational Rehabilitation Unit (DOLI/VRU).
On December 4, 2017, MedSpeed filed a notice of intention to discontinue the employee’s temporary total disability benefits claiming the employee did not communicate with the employer directly about a job offer on November 7, 2017. A second job offer was made in December 2017 and the employee returned to work at MedSpeed on January 2, 2018. The circumstances surrounding the employee’s return to work at MedSpeed were matters of dispute between the parties.
A judge consolidated the employee’s claim petition and objection to discontinuance with MedSpeed’s petition for contribution. On December 10, 2018, a hearing was held before a compensation judge. At issue were the employee’s claims for temporary total disability benefits, permanent partial disability benefits, payment of medical mileage expenses and attorney fees, as well as apportionment of liability between the admitted Wal-Mart and MedSpeed injuries and the compensability of intervention claims.
In his Findings and Order dated January 23, 2019, the compensation judge determined that the employee’s condition from both work injuries warranted a 23 percent permanency rating, and he awarded permanent partial disability benefits. The judge apportioned 25 percent liability to Wal-Mart for the 2010 work injury, and 75 percent liability to MedSpeed for the 2016 work injury. The judge denied the employee’s claim for temporary total disability benefits after January 2, 2018, finding that the employee refused a job offer pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 176.101, subd. 1(i), thus barring the employee from future benefits.
The employee appealed the denial of his claim for temporary total disability benefits. Neither employer appealed.
On appeal, the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals must determine whether “the findings of fact and order [are] clearly erroneous and unsupported by substantial evidence in view of the entire record as submitted.” Minn. Stat. § 176.421, subd. 1(3). Substantial evidence supports the findings if, in the context of the entire record, “they are supported by evidence that a reasonable mind might accept as adequate.” Hengemuhle v. Long Prairie Jaycees, 358 N.W.2d 54, 59, 37 W.C.D. 235, 239 (Minn. 1984). Where evidence conflicts or more than one inference may reasonably be drawn from the evidence, the findings are to be affirmed. Id. at 60, 37 W.C.D. at 240. Similarly, findings of fact should not be disturbed, even though the reviewing court might disagree with them, “unless they are clearly erroneous in the sense that they are manifestly contrary to the weight of evidence or not reasonably supported by the evidence as a whole.” Northern States Power Co. v. Lyon Food Prods., Inc., 304 Minn. 196, 201, 229 N.W.2d 521, 524 (1975).
A decision which rests upon the application of a statute or rule to essentially undisputed facts generally involves a question of law which the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals may consider de novo. Krovchuk v. Koch Oil Refinery, 48 W.C.D. 607, 608 (W.C.C.A. 1993), summarily aff’d (Minn. June 3, 1993).
The employee appeals from the compensation judge’s application of Minn. Stat. § 176.101, subd. 1(i), to deny his claim for accrued temporary total disability benefits and to bar him from receiving future benefits. This provision states, in part:
Temporary total disability compensation shall cease if the employee refuses an offer of work that is consistent with a plan of rehabilitation filed with the commissioner… . Once temporary total disability compensation has ceased under this paragraph, it may not be recommenced.[1]
The compensation judge’s decision on the ultimate issue on appeal is contained in only one finding, which reads as follows:
The employee was offered a job within his restrictions by the employer Medspeed on November 7, 2017. After clearance by the rehabilitation provider that the job offer represented suitable gainful employment pursuant to the rehabilitation plan, the employee returned to work at the desk job in January 2018 at employer Medspeed’s office but left without completing his scheduled shift complaining that the office was too cold to work and his chair was not comfortable. The court specifically finds the employee’s claims as unfounded and made for the purpose of defeating the return to work job offer. His conduct represented a refusal of a job offer invoking a bar to further temporary total disability benefits.[2]
The application of Minn. Stat. § 176.101, subd. 1(i), to the facts in this case requires consideration of whether MedSpeed’s job offer was consistent with the rehabilitation plan and subsequent amendments, and whether the employee unreasonably refused that job offer. The employee’s QRC at DOLI/VRU prepared a rehabilitation plan and related rehabilitation forms, and some of those forms were admitted into evidence as part of the employee’s exhibits.[3] DOLI/VRU intervened for reimbursement of its expenses in this matter. However, the complete DOLI/VRU file was not introduced into evidence and was not part of the record certified to this court on appeal, although it appears that the judge and parties relied in part on the contents of that file in litigating and determining the issues presented at the hearing below.
In this appeal, neither the appellant nor the respondents adequately address the absence of those exhibits from the certified record. The certified record on appeal is incomplete.[4] In addition, the compensation judge failed to make specific findings on the elements required for the application of Minn. Stat. § 176.101, subd. 1(i).[5] We, therefore, vacate finding 3 and order 3 and remand for reconsideration of the issue of whether the employee is entitled to temporary total disability benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act. The compensation judge may allow the parties to submit additional evidence relevant to the determination of this issue.