Jason Hatfield was recently named to the 2018 Edition of Best Lawyers, one the oldest and most respected peer review publications in the legal profession. Lawyers on the Best Lawyers list are selected by conducting exhaustive peer review surveys in which tens of thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The Best Lawyers list has been published for more than three decades, and has earned the respect of the profession, the media, and the public as a reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals. “Best Lawyers is the most effective tool in identifying critical legal expertise,” said CEO Steven Naifeh. “Inclusion on this list shows that an attorney is respected by his or her peers for professional success.”
Jason was selected in the category of Workers Compensation.
Jason tried more than 20 cases in 2016 and worked on appeals related to those cases at the Arkansas Court of Appeals, Arkansas Supreme Court, and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Missouri.
Of note, Jason successfully tried a workers compensation case wherein a city worker was attacked and seriously injured while performing his job shutting off water meters in locations wherein residents failed to pay their bill. When the worker arrived at the residence he was attacked and able to subdue the attacker while waiting for the police. The worker held down the initial attacker when another resident began jumping and stomping on him, causing him to have a stroke which resulted in paralysis. The Workers Compensation Commission awarded a fifty percent wage loss disability over the permanent anatomical impairment rating issued by his physician. After listening to oral arguments in Little Rock, the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the award. Birtcher v. Mena Water Utilities and Arkansas Municipal League, 2017 Ark. App. 210, 518 S.W.3d 707.
In another case, Jason represented a construction worker that was severely injured when his heavy equipment overturned while unloading it from a flatbed tractor trailer. Innumerable facial fractures resulted in misalignment of his eyes, resulting in severe double vision. After trial the Arkansas Workers Compensation Commission concluded that the double vision resulted in 100% loss of vision in one eye as opposed to the employer’s argument that it was only a 25% loss of vision. This conclusion was affirmed by the Arkansas Court of Appeals in Multi-Craft Contractors, Inc., and Gallagher Bassett v. Yousey, 2017 Ark. App. 343.
Jason was also successful in proving a truck driver’s work accident aggravated his pre-existing degenerative disc disease resulting in the need for medical treatment in the form of a cervical discectomy and fusion surgery. J.B. Hunt Transport v. Hollingsworth, 2016 Ark. App. 279, 497 S.W.2d 197. The court found it relevant that the injured truck driver had not received medical treatment for his neck before the accident, the injured worker had medically documented cervical muscle spasms after the accident, and the results of the physical examination performed by the neurosurgeon were consistent with the injured employee’s complaints of pain.
Jason built a new law office in Springdale, Arkansas, in 2017, where he currently practices primarily in the areas of personal injury, car wrecks, workers compensation, and social security disability.
