As I have noted previously, for commentary purposes, some cases are simply too good to pass up. Such a case came before the North Carolina Court of Appeals recently. Penny M. Rumple Richardson vs. Maxim Health Care, et al. is a workers’ compensation case where even the parties’ names have associated innuendo.
The case is an appeal of a workers’ compensation award to a woman who claimed that she was injured in an on-the-job car accident. She sought compensation for, among other things, the replacement of her breast implants. Following the accident, the plaintiff noted that one of her breasts seemed to be deflating and the other one was “rippling” (or perhaps rumpled). She had both implants replaced and then filed a claim for the surgery.
The Court first cited a portion of the workers’ compensation statute that says “injuries shall include breakage or damage to eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures or other prosthetic devices which function as a part of the body.” I’m not really sure that breast implants actually “function” in the same manner as dentures, but the Court found that the claims themselves were properly before it and then looked to whether the damage to the implants was a result of the accident. In finding there was proper compensation for damage to one implant (the one that deflated) but not the other, the Court looked to the testimony of the plastic surgeon who said that the rippling affect might have been due to under-filling of the implant initially. Why there had been no rippling previous to the accident was not explained. The lower commission decision found that if a claimant has to replace one breast implant, then, in the interest of symmetry, it would seem logical that the other side would need to be replaced as well. But the Court of Appeals rejected this balanced analysis and awarded compensation for replacement of only one implant.
Let’s hope the plaintiff can afford the bill for getting the rest of this ironed out.