Virginia: Claimant Establishes Right Knee Condition More Than a Decade After Injury to Left Knee

Stressing that the employer is responsible for all sequelae that flow from the primary work-related injury, a Virginia appellate court affirmed an award of benefits to a claimant who developed a right knee condition more than a decade after sustaining a work-related left knee injury. Quoting earlier precedent, which had specifically relied upon the discussion contained in Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the Court observed that medical evidence tended to establish that claimant’s right knee issues were caused, at least in part, by an altered gait brought about by his earlier left knee injury. The evidence also tended to show that the claimant was morbidly obese, but that did not amount to a sufficient break in causation, said the Court. The mechanical problems in claimant’s right knee flowed inexorably from the left knee injury.

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 Nanochemonics Holdings, LLC v. McKinney, 2019 Va. App. LEXIS 158 (July 9, 2019)

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

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see