Background
Gregory Roberson was injured in July 2022 when he was pinned between heavy totes while working for Pepper Source and Summit Consulting. The employers accepted a right-shoulder injury and provided some treatment for spinal complaints, but denied compensability of his alleged neck and back injuries.
In 2024, an administrative law judge found Roberson had compensable thoracic- and lumbar-spine injuries, but not a compensable cervical injury. After back surgery, Roberson was unable to work. The employers began paying temporary total-disability benefits on February 24, 2025, but refused to pay his attorney a fee on those benefits.
The Court’s Holding
The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the Workers’ Compensation Commission’s award of a controverted attorney’s fee on the temporary total-disability benefits. Substantial evidence supported the finding that the employers’ earlier denial of compensability for Roberson’s back injury controverted benefits that later arose from that injury and surgery.
The court held that voluntary payment of the temporary total-disability benefits did not defeat the fee award. Roberson had to litigate compensability before the employers could be liable for benefits arising from the back injury, and the statute does not require consideration of the amount of legal work performed when calculating the statutory fee on controverted indemnity benefits.
Key Takeaways
- A denial of compensability can support an attorney-fee award on later-accruing indemnity benefits arising from the compensable injury.
- Voluntary payment before a hearing does not necessarily mean benefits were not controverted.
- The fee applied only to temporary total-disability benefits actually paid, not hypothetical future benefits.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that an employer that forces a claimant to establish compensability may bear the attorney-fee consequences for indemnity benefits later flowing from that injury. It also rejects the view that a claimant’s attorney must perform separate work to obtain each later-paid benefit for a fee to be available.