Utah: Worker Loses Knee Injury Claim Because of Preexisting Condition

Applying the "heightened standard" rule, since claimant suffered from a preexisting knee condition, a Utah appellate court denied a claim for a meniscus tear, finding that there had been an insufficient showing that anything unusual or extraordinary had happened at work to trigger the injury. In as much as the injury just as easily could have occurred in the worker's ordinary life, he could not recover workers' compensation benefits. The claimant suffered from chronic degenerative joint disease of the left knee. The court stressed that it had been symptomatic prior to the work incident.

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 White v. Labor Comm’n, 2020 UT App 128, 2020 Utah App. LEXIS 130 (Sept. 11, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 9.02.

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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