Virginia: “Two-Cause” Rule Fails to Aid Worker Who Was Disabled Due to Preex-isting Kidney Disease

Quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, and reiterating the usual, “two-cause” rule: that where a work-related disability combines with a nonwork-related disability to prevent the injured worker from continuing to work, the employer is responsible for the entire disability, the Supreme Court of Virginia held that nevertheless, under the facts of the case, the injured worker was not entitled to total disability benefits since his actual disability was caused by kidney failure related to a preexisting condition unrelated to his work and not by a work-related injury to his arm. The Court stressed that the “two-cause” rule did not apply since the worker’s disability did not have two causes, but only one, which was not connected to the employment.

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 Carrington v. Aquatic Co., 2019 Va. LEXIS 80 (July 18, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 46.03.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see