Russell v. Lowes Product Distribution

GREENE, Judge.

Plaintiff Thomas N. Russell (Russell) appeals from Opinion and Award for the North Carolina Industrial Commission (the Commission) denying total disability payments from Russell’s employer, Lowe’s Product Distribution (Lowe’s), and the administrator of its self-insurance plan, the Fred S. James Company.

Russell, at the time of the initial hearing on this dispute, was thirty-five years old and had a high-school equivalency degree. Prior to 1988, he had been employed as a house painter, an assembly line worker, and a textile worker. Russell began working for Lowe’s in February,…