Phillip Goodman, Sr. v. HBD Industries, Inc., et al.

Summary

The Supreme Court of Tennessee held that the twenty-eight weeks the employee spent participating in a strike must be included when calculating his average weekly wage for workers' compensation benefits. Applying Hartley v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., the court determined that the strike was a voluntary absence and that Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-102(3)(A), rather than subsection (B), governed the calculation. The court affirmed the award of 264 weeks of benefits but reduced the weekly compensation rate from $388.77 to $149.38.

Holdings

1. Weeks during which an employee voluntarily participates in a strike are included in the fifty-two-week average weekly wage calculation and are not deducted as lost time.
2. Section 50-6-102(3)(B) does not apply when the employee maintained a continuous employment relationship despite a period of inactivity caused by a strike.
3. Federal labor law does not require strike-related days to be excluded from the Tennessee average weekly wage calculation and does not preempt application of the Hartley rule.

Questions Presented

1. Whether weeks during which an employee voluntarily participated in a strike must be included when calculating the employee's average weekly wage under Tennessee workers' compensation law.
2. Whether Tennessee Code Annotated section 50-6-102(3)(B), governing employment of less than fifty-two weeks, applied because the employee was absent from work during the strike.
3. Whether federal labor law preempted or otherwise displaced the Tennessee rule requiring strike-related absences to be included in the average weekly wage calculation.

Disposition

affirmed