VanWagoner v. Beverly Enterprises

The majority has forged new ground by holding that a circuit court no longer has jurisdiction to determine whether it or the Workers’ Compensation Commission has jurisdiction to hear a case. Because I concur with the result but not this departure from our well-established law, I must write separately.

As we recently acknowledged in Stapleton v. M.D. Limbaugh Constr. Co., 333 Ark. 381, 969 S.W.2d 648 (1998), pursuant to Article 5, Section 32, of the Arkansas Constitution, the Workers’ Compensation Commission has jurisdiction only when there is an employment relationship between the litigants.…