The 15th Court of Appeals has affirmed summary judgment in favor of a workers’ compensation carrier in a dispute with an injured worker over the scope of her injury.
Stephanie Lovings v. American Zurich Insurance Company/Texas Department of Insurance Division of Workers’ Compensation (No. 15-25-00159-CV; May 28, 2026) arose from a dispute over workers’ compensation benefits. Plaintiff hurt her shoulder at work while moving car batteries onto a conveyor belt. Her employer’s carrier, Zurich, agreed that she sustained a compensable injury including at least a left shoulder sprain and left shoulder strain. Plaintiff, however, asserted eight additional medical conditions. A DWC-appointed physician determined that her injury included five of those conditions. Plaintiff also contested Zurich’s determination about whether she had reached MMI, whether the injury disabled her, and what the correct impairment rating was. After a contested hearing, the ALJ found that Plaintiff’s injury included the five additional conditions, not impairment rating could be assigned because Plaintiff hadn’t yet reached MMI, and Plaintiff ws disabled from the date of the injury to the date of the hearing. The Appeals Panel affirmed. Plaintiff filed a pro se suit in Travis County district court to overturn the decision (she still wanted compensation for three other medical conditions). Zurich filed a no-evidence motion for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. Plaintiff appealed.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Brister, the court of appeals affirmed. Plaintiff argued that the trial court erred by not considering her evidence and for erroneously granting Zurich’s motion. Zurich countered that she didn’t timely file a response and that, in any event, the evidence failed to raise a fact issue. Here Plaintiff filed her second certificate of filing written discovery 15 days after the trial court granted Zurich’s no-evidence MSJ, well past the seven-day prior to the hearing deadline established by TRCP 166a and without leave of court. Still, the court of appeals, “in the interest of justice,” assumed that the trial court’s notation that it considered all the evidence in the file meant that it did indeed consider Plaintiff’s late-filed evidence.
But did that evidence raise a fact issue as to “whether her workplace injury was the producing cause of the three disputed conditions”? Observing that expert testimony is generally required to establish causation of medical conditions “outside the common knowledge and experience of jurors,” the court noted that Plaintiff sought to show that her injury included a “left shoulder full thickness rotator cuff tear, annular bulge with posterior central herniation at C3-C4, and femoral acetabular impingement of the right hip joint,” none of which were in the common knowledge of jurors. Rather, the only expert evidence Plaintiff presented came from the DWC-appointed doctor, who concluded that her compensable injury didn’t include these conditions. Her evidence thus did not raise a fact issue, a
