Virginia: Employer Liable for All Medical Consequences of Original Injury

Stressing that an injured employee is entitled to recovery for all medical consequences and sequelae that flow from the primary injury, as long as there is a direct, causal link between the primary compensable injury and the additional injury for which benefits are sought, a Virginia court affirmed an award of additional benefits made by the state's Workers' Compensation Commission in a case in which the employee twice developed methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), following an unusual injury associated with a dog bite at a customer's home. The court noted that the employee first developed MRSA after treatment for the dog bite injury, that a test indicated the second MRSA infection, which occurred after the employee underwent surgery to treat a consequential injury caused by the initial dog bite, was identical in type to the first, and that the employee's medical expert opined that the second MRSA infection was causally connected to the original injury. There was sufficient evidence to support the Commission's award.

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 Aqua Leisure Pools v. Greene, 2020 Va. App. LEXIS 266 (Nov. 4, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.01.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

Sign up for the free LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation enewsletter at www.lexisnexis.com/wcnews.