He said nighttime driving caused his eye condition. But the expert report never came
A truck driver’s bid for workers’ compensation over his glaucoma diagnosis collapsed after he missed repeated court deadlines to deliver the one piece of evidence.
The worker, employed as a truck driver by Spooner Risk Control Services, filed a workers’ comp appeal in June 2025. His argument: headlight exposure and nighttime driving on the job caused his glaucoma. Spooner disputed the link.
To get that claim across the line, he needed a medical expert’s report connecting the diagnosis to his work. He never produced one.
The court set clear deadlines after a September 2025 case-management conference. The worker’s expert report was due February 2, 2026. That date came and went - no report, no request for more time.
It was not until February 19, more than two weeks after the deadline, that the worker filed a motion asking for extra time on discovery. Then on March 2 - the same day the employer’s expert report was due - Spooner filed to have the case decided in its favour without trial.
What followed was a string of belated motions. The worker asked for more time on March 13, again on March 27, and sought leave to file his own motion on April 27. The court gave him a seven-day extension early on, but the expert report still did not materialise.
On May 31, 2026, the trial court ruled in Spooner’s favour. It noted that the worker “has requested multiple extensions to obtain an expert report establishing that his eye condition (glaucoma) was caused by his employment,” and that “no expert has been identified, and no expert report has been generated to establish causation.”
The worker had also submitted a pretrial statement on May 29, just two days before the ruling. But the appeals court found it did not help him. The medical professional referenced in that document addressed other conditions the worker reportedly suffers from - not whether his glaucoma was related to his job. And the worker listed himself as his sole witness. No expert.
He appealed, representing himself - as he had done throughout - and raised four grounds for overturning the decision.
The Eighth District Court of Appeals, in a decision released October 29, 2026, was not persuaded.
The court acknowledged the worker had a technical point: only one of his four extension requests specifically targeted the expert report, not “multiple” as the trial court stated. But that did not change the outcome. The report was due February 2. He let that date pass and did not ask for an extension until more than a month later.
The worker also argued the court should have treated his late filing as “excusable neglect” - a legal standard that allows courts to accept motions filed after a deadline where the delay was justified. His reason for the delay was that he had not received Spooner’s discovery materials. The appeals court held that was beside the point: not receiving the employer’s paperwork did not prevent him from finding his own medical expert.
The appeals court overruled every ground of appeal and affirmed the trial court’s decision. The court noted the well-established principle that people who represent themselves in court are held to the same standards as those with lawyers, and “must accept the results of their own mistakes.”
For HR teams handling workers’ comp disputes, the case is a clean reminder that causation claims live or die on expert medical evidence - and that courts will enforce procedural deadlines regardless of whether a claimant has legal representation.
