A panel of Georgia Court of Appeals judges and a litigator appeared to reach an impasse on Wednesday as the intermediate court weighed whether the surviving relative of a Solo Cup factory employee who was slain on the job by a co-worker could pursue their case in state court instead of through the Workers’ Compensation board.
“The trial court made three errors in this case,” said plaintiff-appellant counsel, Naveen Ramachandrappa of Bondurant Mixson & Elmore. “Number one, it incorrectly treated the workers’ comp exclusivity bar as a question subject matter jurisdiction, second, it incorrectly put the burden of proof on my client, and number three, even if the trial court was correct about number one and number two, [it] still erred in finding that the exclusivity bar applies to these facts.”
