Electro-Air v. Villines

Melvin Mayfield, Judge.

This is an appeal from the Workers’ Compensation Commission. The employee sprained her ankle as the result of a fall in her employer’s parking lot. From this injury, which was stipulated as compensable, the employee developed a rare condition known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy.

According to the evidence, this condition was first described by doctors during the Civil War in patients who had received trauma to an extremity and suffered pain which was completely out of proportion in its severity to the degree of the trauma received. It begins as a burning or stinging…