Annals of Compensability: PT Stands for Pole Therapy?

May 3rd, 2010 by

Christina Gamble worked at the family friendly Red Robin restaurant in Quakertown PA. She claimed to have fallen and hurt her back. She quit on the spot and went to work for Target, where she worked for two weeks. She filed a workers comp claim for the restaurant injury, which slowly wended its way through the Pennsylvania system until she was awarded benefits nearly a year after the initial injury. Gamble said she was unable to work because standing and changing positions was difficult. She collected over $20,000 in indemnity.
An anonymous tip sent investigators to C.R. Fanny’s Gentleman’s Club and Sports Bar in Easton, where Gamble worked out the kinks in her back by removing her clothing and writhing around a pole. C.R. Fanny’s (read the name aloud for full effect) is noted for its not-exactly highbrow entertainment such as applesauce and Jello wrestling, along with a “frozen thong contest” that is beyond the descriptive powers of this particular blog.
Gamble has been indicted for two counts of insurance fraud and theft by deception. She told investigators that she became an exotic dancer because she and her husband were under enormous financial pressures.
As is so often the case, a number of questions arise:

  • Why was the injury deemed compensable in the first place?
  • With Gamble quitting her job at the restaurant, did anyone at Red Robin or the insurance company pay any attention to this claim?
  • Did Gamble’s doctor attempt to test her physical mobility in any way – for example, using the unorthodox “sliding down the back of a chair” test?
  • Lastly, can Gamble find the proverbial Philadelphia lawyer to take her case, arguing, for example, that pole writhing might indeed be appropriate treatment for a gimpy back and that frozen thongs were an ingenious method of applying ice in the general vicinity of the injured body part?
  • Ms. Gamble should have followed immortal Will Rogers’s advice on gambling: “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.” (I wonder what Will would have thought about AIG…)
    NOTE: Thanks to Pennsylvania reader Rick G. for the heads up on this story.

    Tags: , , ,