A wrist injury, two failed surgeries, and a classroom incident that changed everything
A preschool teacher fell at work, injured her wrist, and spent years fighting for benefits - even after her employer fired her mid-claim.
The Tennessee Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims on October 20 ordered Ebenezer Children’s Academy to pay the worker $1,656.86 in permanent partial disability and provide open lifetime medical benefits for her wrist injury.
The amount was small. The story behind it was not.
The worker was a lead teacher in a two-year-old classroom when she fell on December 16, 2021, and was treated for tenosynovitis, an inflammation of the tendon sheath in her wrist. Ebenezer accepted the claim and accommodated her return to work with restrictions in January 2022.
Then came surgery in March 2022. It failed. A second surgery followed in October. Recovery kept her cycling between work and medical leave for months, with her doctor adjusting restrictions repeatedly through early 2023.
By March 2023, she was back in the classroom but in pain from what she believed was a new aggravation of her injury. She asked to go home. Ebenezer had no coverage for her class, so she stayed.
Later that day, a child threw a shoe and hit another teacher. The parties disputed what happened next, but the employer considered the worker’s actions inappropriate and terminated her.
She found work elsewhere. By the time her initial benefit period expired on November 14, 2023, she was earning at least what she had made at Ebenezer - which is why the court denied her bid for increased disability benefits under Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-207(3)(B).
The messier fights were over temporary disability and past medical expenses. Both sides agreed the worker received some temporary payments while also drawing wages, but neither supplied clear testimony on specific dates. Without that proof, the court denied her claim for additional temporary benefits and the employer’s counterclaim for overpayment.
Past medical expenses hit the same wall. The worker said she and her personal insurer had covered treatment Ebenezer should have paid for, and she was still receiving billing notices about her second surgery. But the court found it could not determine who owed what from the evidence presented.
The more significant outcome was the open lifetime medical coverage ordered under Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-204(a)(1)(A) - ongoing treatment rights for an injury that required two surgeries.
For HR teams, the practical lesson is in the paperwork. Gaps in return-to-work records and benefit payment documentation left both sides unable to prove their case - and firing an employee mid-claim did not end the employer’s medical obligations.
