Everette J. Brown v. Alabama Electric Company and Wausau Insurance Company
Annotate this Case(Download the WordPerfect format here.)
Everette J. BROWN v. ALABAMA ELECTRIC COMPANY
and Wausau Insurance Company
98-148___ S.W.2d ___
Supreme Court of Arkansas
Opinion delivered July 2, 1998
Appeal & error -- petition for review -- denied. -- The supreme
court granted appellant's petition for review; however, the the
abstract of the proceedings before the Workers' Compensation
Commission did not show that the important issues of statutory
construction or constitutional validity were ever presented to the
Commission for its determination; the supreme court found that the
petition for review was improvidently granted and review was
denied; the court of appeals' decision in Brown v. Alabama Electric
Company, 60 Ark. App. 138, 959 S.W.2d 753 (1998), remained the
binding rule in this case.
Petition for Review denied.
The Cortinez Law Firm, P.L.L.C., by: Bob Cortinez, for
appellant.
Kilpatrick, Aud & Willaims, L.L.P., by: A. Gene Williams, for
appellees.
Ray Thornton, Justice.
Appellant Everett J. Brown appeals from the decision of the
Workers' Compensation Commission denying him benefits for his
injuries that resulted from a work-related accident. We initially
granted Brown's petition for review of the court of appeals'
decision affirming the Commission. Upon further examination of
Brown's argument on review, we have determined that review was
improvidently granted.
Brown was injured on July 12, 1994, when the truck that he was
driving for appellee Alabama Electric Company left the road during
a severe rainstorm and struck a tree. Brown sustained a fractured
right femur in the accident. A urinalysis revealed the presence of
marijuana metabolites in the specimen, and when Brown filed a
workers' compensation claim for loss of earning during his period
of impairment and hospital and medical bills, appellees Alabama
Electric and Wausau Insurance Company denied benefits.
At a hearing before an administrative law judge (ALJ), Brown
testified that he had not smoked marijuana after July 1, keeping a
wedding promise to his wife. Two medical experts, Dr. H.H. Miller,
PhD., a pharmacologist and director of toxicology for the
laboratory that tested the specimen, and Dr. Henry F. Simmons, Jr.,
a toxicologist and medical doctor retained by Brown, agreed that
the presence of marijuana metabolites in the urine did not prove or
disprove the presence of marijuana in the system at the time of the
accident, and that the laboratory test of the urine specimen could
not reveal the last time that Brown had used marijuana.
The ALJ found that Brown had proved that he sustained his
injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, and he
awarded benefits to Brown. On appeal to the full Commission, the
Commission determined that Brown had not met his burden of
overcoming the statutory presumption that his injury was
substantially caused by his use of illegal drugs. In a two-to-one
decision, the Commission
found that the presence of marijuana
metabolites was sufficient to allow it to begin with the
"assumption" that the accident was substantially caused by an
illegal drug, and denied benefits to Brown.
Brown appealed to the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and a six-member panel of the court reviewed the case. Two members affirmed
the Commission's decision on the merits, while two members
concurred with the result because the issues of the interpretation
and constitutional validity of the statute were not properly raised
before the Commission. One member of the court reached the meritsand dissented, and another member concurred for other reasons. The
plurality decision of the court of appeals affirmed the
Commission's decision.
We granted Brown's petition for review. However, we have
concluded that the abstract of the proceedings before the
Commission does not show that the important issues of statutory
construction or constitutional validity were ever presented to the
Commission for its determination. Accordingly, we find that the
petition for review was improvidently granted.
The court of
appeals' decision in Brown v. Alabama Electric Company, 60 Ark.
App. 138, 959 S.W.2d 753 (1998), remains the binding rule in this
case.
Review denied.
Corbin, J., not participating.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.