Widow’s Right to Workers’ Comp Benefits Affirmed, Without Direct Proof of Harm

St. Peters, MO, (Law Firm Newswire) February 20, 2015 – A Missouri Court of Appeals has affirmed the decision of a lower court to award workers’ compensation benefits to Dorothy Smith, a widow who lost her husband to hepatitis C.

Smith’s husband, Stephen Smith, worked in a medical laboratory for more than 30 years, beginning in 1969. There, he could have been exposed to the disease before protective equipment and procedures became common in the 1990s.

“In this case, the employer tried to argue that Ms. Smith should not get benefits because she could not definitively prove that the workplace was the source of her husband’s infection,” remarked Charlie James, a Missouri workers’ compensation attorney not involved with the case. “But the court ruled that Ms. Smith did not have to provide absolute proof. Ms. Smith only needed to show that it was probable that her husband’s workplace was the source of the infection.”

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Stephanie Goldberg Widow of health care worker who died of hepatitis C due workers comp benefits

The widow of a heath care worker who died from complications related to his hepatitis C is entitled to benefits despite the fact that the man received a blood transfusion in 1970 that his employer argued could have given him the disease, the Missouri Court of Appeals has ruled.

Stephen Smith worked for Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a medical laboratory technician from 1969 until March 2006, court records show.

Mr. Smith and other health care workers didn't wear protective equipment while handling blood and human tissue before safety measures were implemented in the 1980s or 1990s, according to court records. They also used a narrow glass straw, known as a pipette, to prepare blood slides by placing one end in a tube of blood and sucking on the other end to draw blood into it, records show.

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