Washington: Reopening Case Doomed Where No Objective Medical Evidence Indicated Worsening of Condition

A Washington appellate court affirmed the dismissal of an employee’s application to reopen her workers’ compensation claim, reiterating that under Wash. Rev. Code § 51.32.160(1)(a), the employee must not only show a worsening of her condition, she must produce objective medical evidence supporting her claim. The court added that it was not enough for the claimant honestly to believe her condition had worsened. Here the evidence indicated that after her claim was closed with an award of a small level of permanency, she later complained that she suffered pain “all over.” An MRI scan showed, however, that her condition was essentially unchanged, and the examining physician noted that prior to the closing of the case, the claimant had uttered similar complaints of pain “all over.” There was no objective evidence to support the request for reopening.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Henrickson v. Department of Labor and Indus., 2018 Wash. App. LEXIS 219 (Jan. 29, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 131.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law