File Number: 5016760

Claimant	Employer/Defendant	Insurance Carrier
PATRICIA L. BANKS	DONALDSON COMPANY	SELF-INSURED

Summary

Decision:

This matter comes before the undersigned on remand from the Iowa District Court in and for Polk County. An arbitration decision was filed in this matter by a deputy workers’ compensation commissioner on October 17, 2006. The presiding deputy found that claimant sustained an injury on July 12, 2005 arising out of and in the course of her employment and ordered defendant to pay claimant 200 weeks of permanent partial disability benefits and medical expenses relating to her asthmatic condition including her need for the drug Singulair. Defendant appealed from the findings of the presiding deputy commissioner. On November 14, 2007 an order of delegation of authority was entered granting Deputy Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Vicki L. Seeck final agency authority on the intra-agency appeal. An appeal decision was entered on December 4, 2007, summarily affirming the arbitration decision. Defendant filed a petition for judicial review with the Iowa District Court in and for Polk County on December 14, 2007.

In a ruling dated April 17, 2008 the district court ruled that the order of the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner with regard to Banks’s entitlement to industrial disability benefits is affirmed but the order with regard to Banks’s reimbursement for medical expenses in reversed. The district court decision noted that medical expenses awarded in this matter must be limited to those that can be apportioned and related to the injury which is the subject matter of this case. There was no appeal from the ruling of April 17, 2008.