Story available at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/04/22/news/wyoming/35-deathbenefits.txt
Published on Wednesday, April 22, 2009.
Last modified on 4/22/2009 at 12:33 am
Wyoming told to pay death benefits
By The Associated Press
CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Supreme Court says the state's Workers Safety and Compensation Division must pay death benefits to the widow of a Jehovah's Witnesses member.
Howard W. Williams, 67, died at a Cheyenne hospital in 2006 after surgery to remove a ruptured spleen he suffered in a work-related vehicle accident. Court records say that Williams, his wife and son had refused to allow doctors to use blood products and that he died soon after surgery from low blood pressure.
The Wyoming Workers Safety and Compensation Division later refused to pay death benefits to his widow, Sharon Williams. A hearing officer for the division ruled that she wasn't entitled to benefits because Howard Williams had refused reasonable and necessary medical treatment.
According to the court ruling, written by Justice Michael Golden, the Williams family told Dr. M. Whitney Parnell at United Medical Center in Cheyenne that they were Jehovah's Witnesses and didn't want any blood products used in Mr. Williams' treatment.
Parnell testified that she would have brought Williams into surgery sooner and transfused him with other blood products if she had been allowed to do so. She said using the blood products would have increased Williams' chances of survival, but would not have guaranteed it.
Golden noted in the court ruling that Williams had already lost a lot of blood by the time that he reached the hospital. He noted that Parnell couldn't say that Williams necessarily would have survived if he had accepted transfusions.
"Therefore, under the specific facts of this case, the acceptance of the transfusion of blood products cannot be deemed to be 'reasonably essential' to Mr. Williams' survival," Golden wrote.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the legal organization of the Jehovah's Witnesses, entered the case before the Wyoming Supreme Court and tried to raise the argument that the state statute that the division relied on to deny Mrs. Williams' application for death benefits violated the right to free exercise of religion.
The court ruling didn't address the constitutional argument, saying it didn't need to reach that point before ruling in favor of granting benefits to Sharon Williams on the other grounds.
Chief Justice Barton R. Voigt filed a dissenting opinion saying that the state hearing officer was correct that blood products could have helped Williams.
"When Dr. Parnell took the fork in the road mandated by the employee (Williams) and his son, she clearly took the road less traveled," Voigt said. "I would affirm the decision of the hearing examiner."
Mike Causey, senior assistant attorney general, said Tuesday that the state doesn't see many cases involving these particular facts.
"I think the court closely examined the record, I find it very interesting that we do have a dissent in this case," Causey said.
Cheyenne lawyer Don Sullivan represented Williams' widow.
"Obviously, we're very happy to win," Sullivan said. "I think the court certainly got it right."
"I don't think the opinion plows any new ground," Sullivan said. "It simply enforces the burden of proof that's in the statute. I bet we go another 30 years, if then, before this has bearing on another real-life case."
Sullivan said the ruling means that Sharon Williams is entitled to a one-time payment of $25,000 plus funeral expenses for her husband.
"Wyoming does not treat injured workers well. It never has," Sullivan said of the payment. "That's a one-shot deal."
Copyright © 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.