Topeka ? Kansas already ranks near the bottom of states when it comes to compensating workers who are injured on the job.

But labor officials said the state took several more steps down after a recent Kansas Supreme Court decision that overturned 76 years of precedent in awarding benefits to injured workers.

“The bottom line is that the injured worker is left hung out to dry,” said Wil Leiker, a spokesman for the Kansas AFL-CIO.

The mostly unnoticed court decision basically will make it more difficult for some injured workers to get benefits, according to officials on both sides of the issue.

Low benefits

Kansas already ranks 45th in the nation in workers’ compensation benefits.

The recent dispute was about benefits awarded to Alejandro Casco, a legal immigrant from Honduras, who suffered repetitive stress injury in his left shoulder while working at the Amour Swift-Eckrich plant in Junction City.

After two surgeries to repair a torn rotator cuff, Casco returned to work and used only his right arm to carry 20-pound to 25-pound boxes of sausages. Soon problems arose in his right shoulder, and he eventually had more surgery.

In the complex world of workers’ compensation law, injured workers receive benefits based on impairment ratings for temporary or permanent disabilities.

Casco claimed two things: The injuries to his right shoulder were a probable consequence of the earlier injury to his left shoulder, and that because he lost some function in both arms, he sustained a partial, permanent disability to his entire body.

An administrative law judge awarded Casco $100,000; but the state workers’ compensation board knocked that down to $30,000.

That’s baseball

The state Supreme Court agreed with Casco that his injuries were related, but then it said that his “whole body” impairment was a mistake.

The court said injured workers’ claims for whole body injuries have been misinterpreted since a 1931 state Supreme Court decision.

That decision said if a worker suffered parallel injuries, such as to both eyes or both hands, he could get additional compensation for a whole body disability.

But Justice Eric Rosen, writing for the court, said the 1931 court got it wrong.

“The Workers Compensation Act calculates compensation for injured workers in a specific and sequential manner, their order defined as precisely as the four bases on a major league baseball diamond,” Rosen said.

The decades of precedent converted singles into home runs, Rosen argued. “Neither baseball nor the law can allow such flouting of the rules.”

Future effect

Labor groups and trial lawyers argue that the court’s ruling will not only affect Casco, whose case was ordered back for more administrative hearings, but many other workers, specifically those suffering bilateral carpal tunnel.

In addition, they argue, the decision will reduce employers’ incentive to take back injured workers and find other kinds of jobs for them. With a “whole body” injury, workers also received disability pay based on future earning capacity, unless the employer gave them another job.

“These people, we just threw them to the wolves,” Leiker said of injured workers.

Mark Kolich, the attorney who represented Armour Swift, said the case was a “huge deal.”

“Employers like it. It’s going to reduce their exposure in a lot of these cases,” Kolich said.

Legal officials also noted the Kansas Supreme Court went out of its way to knock down the 1931 decision, ruling on issues that weren’t even argued in the Casco case.

“It was unexpected” in the Casco case, Kolich said, but he said that based on previous rulings, it appeared the current court was headed in the direction of reversing the precedent.