What the Dollar Amounts Cannot Measure

Michael Arneson spent four decades building things, fixing things, and keeping things running. He came up through machine shops and auto repair bays. He drove long haul. He ran his own business. By the time he took the maintenance manager job at Mineral Palace Casino in 2015, he had been working with his hands since 1974. That is not a resume line. That is an identity.

On July 18, 2018, a shorted exhaust fan ended that identity in a fraction of a second. Three hundred amperes and 440 volts traveled through his body. The entry point was his right hand. His dominant hand. The hand he used for everything.

The burns to his fingers healed. The nerve damage did not. Three fingers of his right hand went numb, and they stayed numb. He stopped being able to feel what he was touching. He started dropping things. He began gripping objects with the joint of his thumb instead of the tip because the tip no longer worked right. He described this to the court, and his treating physician confirmed it as objective, documented nerve injury.

The heart condition hit twelve days later. His heart rate spiked to 195 beats per minute. His blood pressure crashed to 76/48. He had chest pain, dizziness, and palpitations. That is a heart in crisis. After hospitalization, the diagnosis was clear: atrial fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers of the heart beat chaotically, raising the risk of stroke, heart failure, and sudden cardiac arrest. He would carry this condition permanently.

Arneson worked for ten more months at the casino after being electrocuted. He did not complain. He did not stop. He relied on coworkers to help him carry things. He took breaks he was not supposed to need. He pushed through the fatigue and the palpitations and the episodes where he had to stop and rest because his heart was misfiring. And then, at the point where he simply could no longer do the job he had always done, he left. He called it “retiring.” He told the court he resigned because he could not perform his duties anymore.

He has not worked anywhere since 2019.

He can still ride his motorcycle. He can still do some mechanical work on bikes and vehicles. The casino’s lawyers used this against him, citing it as evidence that he was not as limited as he claimed. They did not explain how riding a motorcycle on a country road translates into a qualification for the kind of physical, dual-handed maintenance work that was his entire career. The court noted this argument but the real damage it does is simpler: it is a system telling a man that as long as he can still do something he loves, he has no right to expect compensation for losing everything he built his working life around.

From the day he filed his petition in June 2019 to the day the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in October 2024, Arneson spent more than five years fighting a casino and its insurer for basic workers’ compensation benefits. He was 62 when the shock hit. He was 67 when the Department of Labor finally held a hearing. He was 69 when the Supreme Court ruled. The delay is not a procedural inconvenience. It is five years of a man in his late sixties, disabled, without income from the injury that disabled him, navigating a legal system that demands he prove the obvious while the corporation that employed him funds expert witnesses and appellate attorneys to argue otherwise.

“He grabs things differently than you and I do. He won’t use his thumb, the tip of his thumb to grab things because he can’t feel with it. So he grabs with the joint of the thumb rather than the tip.” — Dr. Holloway, Arneson’s treating physician

The casino’s insurer cut off his medical bills on July 20, 2018. Two days after the shock. Before the AFib appeared. Before the nerve damage in his hand fully declared itself. Before any physician had time to assess the long-term trajectory of his condition. They made a business decision in 48 hours and spent the next six years defending it in court.

What They Said Under Oath: The Admissions That Should Have Ended This Fight Early

The insurer’s own medical experts made statements under sworn deposition testimony that, taken together, fundamentally undercut the denial of Arneson’s claim. These are verbatim quotes from the court record.

“The electric shock wave clearly passed through his heart, as the entry point was his right hand and the exit point was his left foot. Electric shocks like this can lead to electrical instability of the heart [and] persist for some time beyond the shock itself, even if the shock itself was not immediately associated with the development of arrhythmias. Therefore, I believe we must consider his atrial fibrillation as [ ] work-related, having been either triggered or significantly exacerbated by the electric shock.”

Dr. Holloway, Arneson’s treating physician — contemporaneous hospital notes, July 2018

• This note was written in real time, by the physician treating Arneson at the hospital, while Arneson was still admitted. It directly establishes that a treating cardiologist-adjacent internist considered the AFib work-related from the very beginning.
• The phrase “triggered or significantly exacerbated” is legally significant because South Dakota workers’ compensation law covers conditions that are aggravated by a work injury, not just directly caused by one.
• The insurer received this information and denied the claim anyway.

“I don’t know [if palpitations following the shock make it more likely the shock caused the AFib]. It would depend on how he described it and what day it was… [If palpitations started] the day after the electric shock, ‘it might possibly make me think that there might have been a relationship between the shock and what he was feeling in between.'”

Dr. Brody, Insurer’s cardiologist expert — deposition testimony

• Dr. Brody was the insurer’s hired cardiologist, brought in to deny the claim. Under cross-examination, he conceded that palpitations beginning the day after the shock would raise the probability of a causal link. Arneson testified that palpitations began within “a couple of days” of the shock. The Department found Arneson credible.
• This means even the insurer’s own expert, if confronted with the facts the Department found credible, acknowledged a possible causal relationship. His denial of causation rested on a factual dispute that was resolved against him.

“I was not aware of any event between July 18th and July 30th other than the electrical shock that would cause Mr. Arneson to go into atrial fibrillation.”

Dr. Brody, Insurer’s cardiologist expert — deposition testimony

• This is the single most damaging admission in the record. The insurer’s own cardiologist, whose job was to provide scientific cover for the denial, admitted he could not identify any other explanation for why Arneson went into AFib on July 30.
• The court noted this admission directly in its analysis. When you cannot name an alternative cause, denying the documented cause is indefensible.
• The insurer continued litigating for two more years after this deposition.

“Yeah. It’s been reported it happens. Oh, it does happen.” [When asked whether AFib after an electric shock can occur.] … “Low-voltage electrocution may cause cardiac insult… can cause myocardial necrosis with ventricle fibrillation and also arrhythmias.”

Dr. Brody, Insurer’s cardiologist expert — deposition testimony

• Dr. Brody agreed that electric shock causes AFib, causes heart muscle death, and causes arrhythmias. His objection was statistical: he believed hyperthyroidism was a more likely cause in this specific case. But he could not rule out electrical causation, and he admitted he knew of no other triggering event.
• Denying a claim on the grounds that a known cause is statistically less common than another known cause, when you cannot identify any other event that explains the patient’s collapse, is a business decision disguised as a medical one.

“He admitted that all of Arneson’s symptoms are signs of someone with an electrical shock injury and that a low-voltage electric shock can cause atrial fibrillation. He also agreed it is ‘common for people who have developed sustained atrial fibrillation to initially have some brief transient palpitations that they don’t think much of and ignore but then they come in with a full-blown atrial fibrillation episode.'”

South Dakota Supreme Court summarizing Dr. Elkins’ admissions — 2024 S.D. 61, ¶37

• Dr. Elkins was the insurer’s occupational medicine physician. He also admitted that every one of Arneson’s symptoms fit the profile of an electric shock victim. His objection was a timing argument: he believed cardiac damage would appear within 12 to 24 hours. But he admitted arrhythmia could happen days later, and he agreed that brief palpitations often precede full AFib episodes, which is precisely what Arneson experienced.
• Dr. Elkins also does not treat cardiac or thyroid patients in his practice and is not a specialist in either field. Dr. Brody treats AFib patients daily but rarely sees electrocution cases. Dr. Holloway has treated both cardiac conditions and electrocution patients for nearly three decades and was Arneson’s actual treating physician. The court gave weight to those distinctions.

“When Carroll (or his employee) spoke to employers regarding possible jobs for Arneson, they informed them he had limited use of his right hand, but they said nothing about his fatigue or AFib.”

South Dakota Supreme Court — 2024 S.D. 61, ¶59

• This is the core of the fraudulent labor market survey the casino’s vocational expert conducted. Prospective employers were told about the hand. They were not told that Arneson has to take unpredictable 10 to 30 minute rest breaks. They were not told he can go into AFib and need to withdraw from a customer interaction mid-conversation. Employers who said they would accommodate a one-handed worker did not know they were being asked to accommodate a worker with a chronic cardiac condition.
• The South Dakota Supreme Court has previously held that this kind of selective disclosure makes a vocational expert’s opinion legally insufficient. The casino’s entire employment availability argument rested on this tainted survey.

“An expert’s listing of jobs that focuses on a claimant’s capabilities to the exclusion of his limitations is insufficient as a matter of law.” — South Dakota Supreme Court, citing Eite v. Rapid City Area School District 51-4 (2007)

The Insurance Company’s Narrative vs. What the Court Found

Risk Administration Services constructed a specific story to justify denying Arneson’s claim. The court record dismantles it point by point.

This Case Is a Map of Exactly How the System Fails Working People

Public Health

The health consequences Arneson carried were severe, permanent, and well-documented. The way the insurer handled them reveals a broader pattern in how corporate insurers treat electrical injury claims.

• Arneson sustained a 300-ampere, 440-volt shock. The discharge informational sheet he was given at the emergency room stated that 50 volts can disrupt a heart’s rhythm. Arneson received nearly nine times that voltage. This is an extremely serious electrical injury by any medical standard, and his insurer characterized it as a low-probability event not warranting ongoing benefits.
• Atrial fibrillation is a chronic, progressive, and potentially fatal condition. Once triggered, it predisposes a person to future episodes permanently. Arneson now lives with an elevated risk of stroke, heart failure, and sudden collapse for the rest of his life, as a documented consequence of a workplace electrical injury. His insurer paid two days of medical bills in response.
• The nerve damage to Arneson’s right hand is permanent. He lost fine motor sensation in his dominant hand, cannot feel temperature or pressure accurately, and cannot safely operate machinery or equipment. For a man whose entire career was built on hands-on maintenance work, this is not a partial disability. It is occupational erasure.
• Dr. Holloway’s restrictions include a two-hour daily limit on standing or walking and a four-hour daily limit on sitting. Combined with unpredictable AFib episodes requiring 10 to 30 minute rest periods, Arneson cannot reliably hold any job requiring sustained physical presence or customer interaction. These are medical facts. The insurer’s legal strategy was to dispute them for six years.
• The emergency room discharge sheet given to Arneson explicitly warned that high-voltage shock can harm the heart and that symptoms including irregular heartbeat can emerge as a delayed consequence. The insurer’s experts knew this medical literature. Their denial was not based on ignorance. It was based on the calculation that statistical improbability arguments might succeed in litigation.

Economic Inequality

This case illustrates the structural economic disadvantage that working-class injury victims face when they are forced to fight corporate insurers in a drawn-out legal system.

• Arneson was a 62-year-old maintenance manager when he was injured. His entire career was in skilled manual labor: machine operation, auto repair, building maintenance. He had an associate degree in finance but no office experience. When the insurer denied his claim, it was not just denying a check. It was denying any realistic path back to economic participation for a man whose body could no longer do the only work he had ever done.
• The Department of Labor’s hearing did not take place until September 14, 2022, more than four years after the July 18, 2018 injury. During those four years, Arneson had no workers’ compensation income and was contesting the denial. The financial pressure on a disabled 66-year-old man during a four-year legal fight is not recorded in the court document, but it is real.
• Past disability benefits were only awarded from February 3, 2020 onward. The period between Arneson’s departure from his job in 2019 and February 2020, during which he was injured, disabled, and unable to work, produced no compensable disability period because of a technicality related to when his doctor formally imposed restrictions. The insurer benefited from this gap. Arneson absorbed the cost of it.
• The casino’s vocational expert, James Carroll, conducted a labor market survey in the Northern Black Hills and concluded Arneson was employable. That survey told prospective employers about the hand limitation. It said nothing about AFib or fatigue. The jobs identified included front desk associate, cashier, and food service worker, positions requiring sustained standing, bilateral hand use, customer interaction, and the ability to remain present and responsive. None of these requirements fit Arneson’s documented limitations. The survey was designed to produce a usable result, not an accurate one.
• Working people injured on the job in South Dakota must prove their injury “to a reasonable degree of medical probability” using expert testimony in adversarial hearings. The corporation that injured them is simultaneously the one funding the expert witnesses, the attorneys, and the appeals. Arneson’s treating physician provided clear, consistent testimony over multiple years. The insurer hired two additional specialists to contest it. Arneson won, but the structural inequality of that fight is the story behind the story.
• The vocational expert Arneson presented, Tom Audet, testified that even the one job Carroll identified as suitable for Arneson, a supervisor role, was the only option, and that retraining was not feasible given Arneson’s age, restrictions, and work history. Audet’s conclusion was that “even maintaining gainful employment is going to be very problematic.” He found Arneson unemployable. The Department agreed. The circuit court reversed it. The Supreme Court reversed the reversal. Every step of that process cost Arneson time, legal fees, and years of his life.

“An opinion based solely on statistical improbability ignores the fact that, by definition, improbable events do occur.” — South Dakota Supreme Court, 2024 S.D. 61, ¶35

What the Numbers Say About What a Worker’s Disability Is Worth to the System

What Accountability Looks Like and What You Can Do About It

GR Management, LLC (Mineral Palace Casino) and Risk Administration Services, Inc. spent six years using legal resources to avoid paying workers’ compensation benefits to a man who was electrocuted on their property. Here is who watches them and what organizing looks like in this space.

The Entities Responsible

• GR Management, LLC d/b/a Mineral Palace Casino: The employer of record. Located in Deadwood, South Dakota. Responsible for the workplace conditions that resulted in a 300-ampere, 440-volt electrical shock to a maintenance manager. Represented on appeal by Boyce Law Firm, Sioux Falls, South Dakota (Charles A. Larson and Kristin N. Derenge).
• Risk Administration Services, Inc.: The workers’ compensation insurer that cut Arneson’s benefits 48 hours after the injury, hired experts to dispute his treating physician, funded a flawed vocational survey, and litigated the claim through three levels of the South Dakota court system over six years.

Watchlist: Who Has Oversight Authority Here

• South Dakota Division of Labor and Management: The state agency responsible for administering the workers’ compensation system. This case moved through their Department of Labor. Their initial ruling was correct. The circuit court overturned it. The Supreme Court reinstated it. The Division has no mechanism to sanction insurers who pursue bad-faith denials through prolonged litigation.
• South Dakota Division of Insurance: Regulates workers’ compensation insurers operating in South Dakota, including Risk Administration Services, Inc. Responsible for oversight of claims practices. Insurers who deny claims in bad faith, fund misleading vocational surveys, and litigate against their own experts’ admissions may warrant an examination of their claims handling practices.
• OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration): Federal agency responsible for electrical safety standards in workplaces. A commercial exhaust fan delivering 440 volts and 300 amperes to a worker’s hand represents a potential violation of OSHA electrical safety standards. Whether an OSHA inspection occurred after the July 18, 2018 incident is not stated in the court record.
• South Dakota Legislature: South Dakota’s workers’ compensation system is governed by SDCL 62. The burden on injured workers to prove causation through expert testimony in adversarial hearings, the absence of bad-faith penalties for insurers who prolong litigation, and the gap period before formal restrictions are imposed are all legislative choices that can be changed.
• National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI): The organization that develops workers’ comp data, rates, and forms for most U.S. states. Tracks patterns in claims denial and litigation outcomes that regulators can use to identify insurers with abnormal denial rates.

What Resistance Looks Like

• Know your state’s workers’ comp filing deadlines before you get hurt. In South Dakota, time limits apply to filing a workers’ comp petition. Arneson filed in June 2019 for a July 2018 injury. If you are injured at work, document everything in writing immediately and contact a workers’ compensation attorney as soon as possible, even if the insurer is initially paying benefits.
• Demand a detailed explanation for any benefits denial in writing. Insurers are required to explain why they are denying a claim. If the denial says “not a major contributing cause,” that is a legal conclusion, not a medical one. It can be challenged, and this case proves it successfully can be.
• Request your complete medical records immediately after a workplace injury. The insurer will build its case from those records. You need the same information they have. Dr. Elkins based part of his opinion on a factual claim about Arneson’s thumb that was contradicted by the actual medical records. You cannot catch those errors if you do not have the records.
• Connect with your state’s injured worker advocacy organizations. South Dakota has legal aid organizations and worker advocacy groups. If you cannot afford a workers’ comp attorney, legal aid may assist. The National Employment Law Project (nelp.org) tracks workers’ rights policy nationally and can point to local resources.
• Push for bad-faith claims handling legislation in your state. Currently, South Dakota has no statutory penalty for insurers who deny legitimate workers’ comp claims and litigate them for six years. Thirty-six other states have bad-faith insurance statutes. Contacting your state legislator to request a bad-faith workers’ comp penalty is a direct action that targets the financial incentive behind prolonged denials.
• Support unions and collective bargaining in your workplace. Unionized workplaces have collective agreements that include injury reporting protections, access to union representatives during claims processes, and contractual rights that create a counterweight to employer/insurer pressure. The absence of collective representation leaves injured workers alone in a legal process designed by and for institutions.
• If you work in maintenance, electrical, or facilities, document every hazard you report. A paper trail of reported hazards protects you legally if you are injured. Arneson was the maintenance manager. He was responsible for monitoring electrical units. A shorted commercial exhaust fan that delivers 440 volts to a worker’s hand is a documented equipment failure, and the evidence of that failure matters in a causation dispute.