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Cooper v. St. Tammany Parish School Board11/7/2003
In this workers' compensation case, Jodie Cooper appeals a judgment denying her claims for temporary total disability benefits or, in the alternative, for supplemental earnings benefits, as well as for penalties and attorney fees. We affirm.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
Jodie Cooper, a lunchroom technician at Lee Road Junior High School in Covington, whose employer was the St. Tammany Parish School Board, injured her left knee in a job-related accident on September 27, 1999. She worked until November, but in December 1999, arthroscopic surgery was performed to repair torn meniscus cartilage and open knee surgery was performed to remove a cyst from behind the knee. After a recovery period that included physical therapy and work hardening, Ms. Cooper returned to her job in the school cafeteria on May 11, 2000. At this point, her doctor began periodic injections to lubricate the knee, and she continued taking antiinflammatory medications. Her employer paid all medical expenses and paid temporary total disability benefits until she returned to work.
Although her doctor had limited her to occasional standing and walking and occasional lifting up to thirty pounds, Ms. Cooper's cafeteria position required constant standing and repetitive heavy lifting. She also had a temporary after-school-care job at another school, which was relatively light duty. During the summer of 2000, she worked another temporary job for the school system at a summer camp in a position that did not require any lifting and was within her physical limitations. Ms. Cooper worked at her cafeteria job the entire following school year, August 2000 to May 2001, but continued to experience pain and discomfort related to her knee injury.
On March 22, 2001, Ms. Cooper filed a disputed claim for compensation. She sought an increase in and reinstatement of wage benefits, which had terminated upon her return to work in May 2000. The claim also requested disability status, payment for disfigurement, penalties, and attorney fees.
In May 2001, over her and her supervisor's objections, Ms. Cooper's workday was increased from six hours per day to seven. When the next school year began in August 2001, Ms. Cooper returned to work. However, on September 5, 2001, she left and did not return, claiming she could no longer do the job because of pain. When she did not return to work, the school principal, Dennis Krieger, began termination proceedings based on her alleged physical inability to perform the work required by her job position. After a hearing, she was terminated from her job in November 2001. The termination included her cafeteria job, as well as the temporary positions in after-school care and the summer camp. She was not offered vocational rehabilitation or any other job with less demanding physical conditions.
Ms. Cooper's workers' compensation case was tried June 5, 2002, and judgment was rendered June 25, 2002. The judgment stated Ms. Cooper was entitled to continued reasonable and necessary medical treatment as prescribed by her treating physicians with respect to her September 1999 knee injury, and awarded her 25 weeks of benefits for disfigurement due to scarring, subject to a credit for benefits previously paid. Her claims for temporary total disability benefits or, in the alternative, supplemental earnings benefits were denied, as were her claims for penalties and attorney fees. Her motion for new trial was denied in a judgment rendered August 26, 2002. Ms. Cooper appealed both judgments.
She assigns as error the court's failure to award supplemental earnings benefits, given the evidence that she is unable to earn 90 percent of her average monthly wage due to her job-r
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