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Raymond Banks v. United Parcel Service8/18/2005
Background
The record developed before the trial court contains the following facts.
Plaintiff Raymond Banks ("Banks") was employed with defendant United Parcel Service ("UPS") for thirty years. Banks retired from UPS in March 2002 after the knee injury which is the subject of this claim rendered him unable to meet the physical requirements of his job. Banks had completed high school and one quarter of college and was sixty years old at the time of trial on July 2, 2003.
The majority of Banks' career, including the period from 1997 to 2001, was spent as a "package car driver," making deliveries to residences and businesses in Moore County and Lincoln County, Tennessee. Banks testified that the package car driver position required him to make between fifty and sixty deliveries per day and lift between 120 and 200 packages per day, many of which weighed more than fifty pounds. He testified that the job required him to be on his feet " ll the time" and required him to climb steps and occasionally kneel to retrieve packages. From 1993 to 1997, Banks had worked as a "feeder driver," driving eighteen-wheeler trucks. Both positions require drivers to lift seventy pounds alone and 150 pounds with assistance.
Mr. Banks first noticed stiffness and soreness in his left knee in 1991. He did not think at the time that his knee pain was work-related because there had been no specific knee incident at work. He was initially treated by an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Robert Russell, with medication and cortisone shots; on December 27, 1991, however, Banks underwent an arthroscopic procedure that revealed a torn medial meniscus and chondromalacia, an early arthritic change in his left knee. Banks continued to have pain in his knee over the next several years.
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Allen F. Anderson testified by deposition that he first treated Banks for knee problems on September 3, 1993. He next saw Banks on June 11, 1998, when Banks complained that he could not bend his knee, stand, or walk without pain. Dr. Anderson treated Banks with medication, cortisone shots, and braces, but Banks' knee condition deteriorated over the next two and a half years. Dr. Anderson advised Banks in April 2001 that Banks needed knee replacement surgery. Banks elected to postpone the surgery as long as possible, because he knew that he would not be able to perform the physical requirements of his job after the surgery. Finally, when the pain became "excruciating" to Banks, he scheduled knee replacement surgery with Dr. Anderson for November 5, 2001.
Following surgery, Banks was off work from November 5, 2001, until March 3, 2002, when Dr. Anderson released him to work. Banks was restricted from lifting over fifty pounds as well as from kneeling, crawling, or sitting for more than three hours. Because he could not perform his previous jobs at UPS under the physical restrictions, he took retired status as of March 4, 2002.
Dr. Anderson testified that throughout his treatment of Banks up until the time of surgery, Banks never mentioned that his injury was work-related; Banks likewise testified that he had never discussed with Dr. Anderson whether the injury was work-related and that Dr. Anderson had never opined that it was. Although Banks and his wife testified that Dr. Anderson mentioned that Banks' work did not help matters, Banks testified that he did not believe he had a workers' compensation claim because he was not injured in a particular incident on the job.
Wayne Scales, Banks' supervisor at UPS, testified that he had assumed Banks' knee injury was work-related, but apparently did not share this assumption with Banks. He testified that
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