Kansas: Court Expands Pardo Decision: Use of AMA Guides 6th Ed. Is Unconstitutional

On Friday (August 3, 2018), the Court of Appeals of Kansas held the use of the AMA Guides (6th Edition) for determining impairment levels of injured workers under the Kansas Workers’ Compensation Act (“the Act”) was unconstitutional as a violation of due process. Expanding its holding in Pardo v. United Parcel Servs., 56 Kan. App. 2d 1, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 30 (June 1, 2018), in which a panel of the court determined that the use of the 6th Edition was unconstitutional as applied to one injured worker, the Court determined that the use of the 6th Edition was unconstitutional on its face. The Court concluded that after the adoption of current language in Kan. Stat. Ann. § 44-510d(b)(23) and (b)(24) and Kan. Stat. Ann. § 44-510e(a)(2)(B), which mandated use of the AMA Guides — 6th Edition for injured workers suffering permanent impairment on or after January 1, 2015, the Act no longer provided an adequate substitute remedy for common law rights workers had given up. 

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 Johnson v. U.S. Food Serv., No. 117,725, 2018 Kan. App. LEXIS 44 (Aug. 3, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 80.07.

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