Utah: Cervical Surgery Not Compensable Where it was Required to Treat Preexisting Condition, But Not Results of Accidental Injury Itself

Stressing that injuries are compensable under the Tennessee workers’ compensation laws, the work-related accident must not only be the legal cause of the injury, it must also be the medical cause as well. Accordingly, where five physicians concluded that a worker’s neck surgeries were unnecessary to treat a work-related accident, but were necessary to treat the worker’s preexisting conditions, the Commission did not err in denying the employee’s claim. Claimant, a university employee, developed upper back and right arm pain and numbness, tingling, and weakness in her right hand after helping a student move eight heavy oak tables at work. The pain continued for some time. Several physicians indicated that she required surgery, not due to her work-related injury, but to preexisting degenerative disc and facet disease. Claimant contended it did not matter that the work-related accident caused a temporary aggravation, that she was entitled to lifetime medical treatment for the injury, not merely temporary treatment. The court disagreed, noting that the medical-cause prong required claimant to prove the disability was medically the result of an exertion or injury that occurred during a work-related activity. The court noted that a three-doctor medical panel appointed by the ALJ determined that the accident caused “at most” a cervical spine "strain/sprain resulting in temporary aggravation of claimant’s pre-existing degenerative cervical spine disease. The panel further concluded that the condition stabilized within a relatively short period of time.

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 Petersen v. Labor Comm’n, 2016 UT App 222, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 233 (Nov. 3, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.02.

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