Court: Worker Likely to Prevail on Mold Exposure Claim

moldy wall

Tennessee’s Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims ruled at a Sept. 9 expedited hearing on a summary judgment that a Town of Oakland activity center coordinator is likely to prevail at trial on her workers’ compensation claim for illness she attributes to mold in the building.
The court found her credible and noted that the only expert opinion in the record backed her claim. It nonetheless denied payment of about $10,000 in medical invoices because they were unsigned by the doctor and unauthenticated by a records custodian, and because the doctor’s letter never addressed whether the charges were reasonable, as Tennessee’s workers’ compensation rules require.
The town had been warned about the building for years. A 2020 inspection flagged leaks, and an employee voiced “very strong reservations” about its safety. A year later, an architectural firm found “significant” mold and recommended remediation. The building stayed in use, and the town assigned the coordinator there in 2023.
She developed pneumonia by June 2024 and bronchitis by November, along with fatigue, insomnia, endocrine problems and weight loss of roughly 30 pounds. In September 2025, she suspected the building was the cause and told her supervisor. The town pulled boards from the walls, and an environmental consultant confirmed multiple mold types in air samples from five areas, with damage “suggestive of prolonged and sustained” water intrusion.

Wyoming’s Joint Labor, Health & Social Services Committee considered a bill Oct. 1 in that would extend workers’ compensation coverage to volunteer ski patrollers and add ski patrol personnel to the state’s legal definition of first responder. The proposal, Draft 27LSO-0037 v0.3, is still at the interim committee stage and has not become law.
Wyoming’s workers’ compensation law generally excludes volunteers unless they fall into enumerated categories, such as volunteer firefighters, search and rescue personnel, ambulance personnel, search pilots and mine rescue workers. Volunteer ski patrollers are not on that list, and the draft would add them.
The first responder designation would matter most for mental health claims. First responders can receive benefits for a qualifying mental injury without a compensable physical injury, if they have a diagnosis from a qualified mental health professional and clear and convincing evidence.
If the measure moves through the 2027 legislative session and becomes law, the primary workers’ compensation changes would take effect July 1, 2027, and the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services would write the rules to implement them.

The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, affirmed a ruling that Mt. Hawley Insurance Co. has no duty to indemnify its insured, Stone Development Group, over the 2017 death of carpenter Ramiro Godinez at a Waukegan construction site, because Godinez was found to be an SDG employee and the policies excluded injuries to employees.
Godinez fell more than 20 feet in September 2017, while retrieving tools from a plywood box on a raised forklift, and died six days later. His estate sued SDG for wrongful death, and the case settled for $2.65 million, with Mt. Hawley agreeing to pay $250,000 of it.
The court found SDG’s commercial general liability and excess policies did not define “employee” beyond including leased workers and excluding temporary workers, so the ordinary dictionary meaning applied, and that the trial court’s employee finding was not against the manifest weight of the evidence.
That finding rested on SDG’s vice president John Stone repeatedly telling the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that Godinez was an employee, but he contradicted himself in trial testimony saying he was only a prospective hire.
SDG had no workers’ compensation insurance at the time of the accident.