Widow has goal of helping workers after brain trauma

RICHMOND

Armed with grisly pictures of her husband, Art, in a hospital after his brain operation, Claire Pierce thought that convincing legislators to add protections to the state workers' compensation law would be simple.

She was wrong.

Pierce traveled from Stafford County to the Capitol this winter to support legislation that would give victims who suffer on-the-job brain injuries the same legal treatment as people who die at work.

Although denied a chance to speak on a January morning just before a Senate committee killed the bill, Pierce says she is undaunted and will try again next year.

For Pierce and her family, SB821 is personal. She wants to honor her husband and make sure no one has to suffer what he did.

In September 2006, Art Pierce, a truck driver, was found lying unconscious with a bleeding head wound on a company lot in Stafford. He was lying next to the dump truck he operated.

He was diagnosed with brain trauma, which his family believes he suffered by falling from the truck while trying to repair it.

His claim for workers' compensation was denied because no one saw the fall and Art Pierce wasn't able to testify at a hearing.

"He could not speak, he could not walk, he could not eat," said his sister-in-law, Debra Gromelski of Virginia Beach, who attended the January committee hearing.

Pierce never recovered from his injury and died Jan. 1, 2008, at age 65.

State Sen. Richard Stuart, R- Westmoreland County, who sponsored the bill, argued that it's a minor but necessary law change to protect workers.

"You're better off to get killed in Virginia than you are to be brain damaged and not be able to recall what happened," said Stuart, a former local prosecutor whose district includes Stafford County.

Unlike brain injury cases, workers' compensation claims made on behalf of those who die of other injuries on the job are given the benefit of the doubt in official proceedings.

Several insurance and business groups opposed the bill, saying it was unnecessary and could invite fraud and increased litigation.

"This would have changed the very fabric of the workers' compensation system," said Chuck Midkiff, a workers' compensation attorney and one of two lobbyists who spoke against the bill at the January hearing.

Midkiff, whose firm represented the trucking company that employed Pierce, also argues that the state Workers' Compensation Commission regularly makes awards in brain injury cases so there is no need to change the law.

Job-related injury awards are typically paid by workers' compensation insurance policies purchased by employers.

A commission report from 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, indicates that 42 of the 51,255 serious workplace claims in the state were initially filed as brain injury cases.

Claire Pierce said next year, when she pushes once more for the change, she will forgo appeals for sympathy and focus "on the dollars and cents" she believes the law change will save the state.

"The human interest thing - I'm not even going there," she said during a recent interview.

The failure of SB821, Stuart said, is an example of the pressure on legislators to balance citizens' requests against an entrenched system of government and private interests that often prevails.

"I don't want to say I'm naive, but I am naive to the extent that I believe people will do things because it's the right thing to do," Stuart said.

That doesn't always happen, he said. "And I guess that's the first lesson you learn up here."

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com