The state Industrial Commission is being asked to take up the case of a Cumberland County man seeking compensation after being severely beaten by a state trooper 23 years ago.

The N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety has appealed a decision by Wanda Taylor, a deputy Industrial Commissioner, that Richard Wayne Barfield be entitled to a hearing on damages of up to $100,000. The department includes the State Highway Patrol, Dan Kane reports.

Barfield, 50, suffered major head injuries from the beating by Trooper Geary Blackwood, 56, outside a convenience store in Fayetteville in 1985. Surgeons had to remove a piece of his skull and patch his head together with cranial plaster and a plate.

Blackwood said he did nothing wrong and was defending himself, but the patrol let him go shortly after the arrest and said he had acted outside of the scope of his authority.

The state used that argument to deny having to pay Barfield compensation, but Taylor found that a state law passed three years ago no longer allows the patrol to assert that defense.

Pamela Thorpe Young will chair the N.C. Industrial Commission.

Gov. Mike Easley named the Cary attorney head of the commission, which oversees workers' compensation claims, starting Oct. 1. The seven commissioners serve six-year terms.

Previously, Young served as deputy secretary and legal counsel to the state Department of Cultural Resources, and as a deputy commissioner of the Industrial Commission from 1996 to 2002. She worked in the Office of Planning under Gov. Jim Hunt.

Her father was the late Marion Thorpe, longtime chancellor of Elizabeth City State University.

She replaces Buck Lattimore, who is stepping down after seven years as chairman of the commission.