Iowa: Injured Worker was Not Limited to Scheduled Award

An award to an injured employee could be made on a permanent partial disability basis—he was not limited to a scheduled award—where the employee suffered a torn quadriceps tendon in his lower extremity, but medical evidence indicated that while the worker’s “injury” was limited to his knee and thigh, his impairment extended to his hip, held the Iowa appellate court. The court stressed that injury and impairment were not equivalent terms. Quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the court held that if the effects of the loss of the member extend to other parts of the body, the scheduled allowance is not exclusive.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and 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 Masterbrand Cabinets v. Simons, 2021 Iowa App. LEXIS 814 (Sept. 22, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 87.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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