The employer's star witness was found biased - and the shrink wrap told a different story
A first-day worker tripped on shrink wrap at a staffing agency - and the employer's defense fell apart.
A Tennessee workers' compensation court ordered Staffmark Group to provide a panel of physicians to a worker injured on her first day after her foot became entangled in shrink wrap left on the warehouse floor. The employer argued the fall was idiopathic - a term for a fall with no external cause - but the court rejected that defense after finding the employer's key witness unreliable.
The worker was assigned to a station where she moved rolls of wrapping between pallets and affixed stickers. The rolls were wrapped in shrink wrap that had been cut and left around the base of the pallets and on the floor. On June 12, 2025, as she returned to her station, her foot caught on the material and she fell, striking her arm on a table before hitting the ground. Coworkers tried to help her up, but she fell again and struck her knee. An ambulance was called.
Staffmark presented a coworker who testified that no shrink wrap littered the floor and that the worker appeared to fall slowly as if dizzy. The court found that testimony unreliable. The judge noted the coworker appeared "nervous, defensive, argumentative, and biased" under credibility standards set by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The court called her account "implausible," pointing out that she described the worker falling in "slow motion" while also testifying that another coworker ten feet away ran to help immediately. It was the employer's witness, the court noted, who first suggested the worker must have been dizzy - not the worker herself.
The court also observed that the employer's witness appeared "personally offended or concerned" that a male coworker who assisted the injured worker had previously settled a workers' compensation claim, but never explained how that detail was relevant to the fall.
Under Tennessee law, idiopathic injuries are not compensable unless a workplace hazard causes or worsens the injury, per Phillips v. A&H Construction Co. The court found the worker demonstrated a likelihood of prevailing at a hearing on the merits and ordered Staffmark to provide medical treatment.
The court denied temporary disability benefits and past medical expenses at this time. The worker had not presented expert medical proof connecting her inability to work to the injury or establishing the duration of her disability.
The expedited hearing order, filed September 8, 2026, is interlocutory. A status hearing is set for October 29, 2026.
