CALIFORNIA COMPENSATION CASES Vol. 89, No. 7 July 2024 A Report of En Banc and Significant Panel Decisions of the WCAB and Selected Court Opinions of Related Interest, With a Digest of WCAB Decisions...
Havanis v. Calif. Dept. of Transportation (Board Panel Decision) By Hon. Colleen Casey, Former Commissioner, California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board I. Medical apportionment is not the...
By Robert G. Rassp, author of The Lawyer’s Guide to the AMA Guides and California Workers’ Compensation (LexisNexis) Disclaimer: The material and any opinions contained in this treatise are...
Oakland, CA – Private self-insured claim volume in the California workers' compensation system fell 9.5% in 2023, producing the biggest year-to-year decline in private self-insured claim frequency...
By Hon. Susan V. Hamilton, Former Assistant Secretary and Deputy Commissioner, California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board No matter the source of your media consumption, it seems that the topic...
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed a decision of the District's Compensation Review Board that denied workers' compensation benefits to a diabetic worker after finding that the employer had adequately rebutted the District's presumption of compensability [see D.C. Code § 32-1521(1)] where the employer's medical expert testified that the dominant factors in causing the claimant's stroke were her uncontrolled hypertension and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus. The court stressed, however, that the employee's theory of compensability had not been specifically rebutted. She had contended her work aggravated her preexisting hypertension. The employer's substantial evidence must address the employee's specific theory of causation and the employer's expert here had not placed the employee's theory into question. The court stressed that the relevant question was not whether the employee's work was the most dominant or even a major contributory factor to her stroke; it was whether her work was a contributing factor, a question upon the employer's expert never opined. Under these circumstances, it was error to find the presumption had been rebutted.
Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).
LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.
See Ramos v. District of Columbia Dep't of Empl. Servs., 2020 D.C. App. LEXIS 188 (May 28, 2020)
See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 130.06.
Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law
For a more detailed discussion of the case, see
Sign up for the free LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation enewsletter at www.lexisnexis.com/wcnews.