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...
Quoting Larson's Workers' Compensation Law , and stressing that all medical consequences and sequelae that flow from the primary injury are compensable as long as there is a direct causal link between the primary injury and the additional injury for which...
New York’s Workers’ Compensation Board inappropriately apportioned 60 percent a claimant’s disability to his non-disabling and undiagnosed multiple sclerosis, held a state appellate court. Stressing that there was no evidence that the condition had affected the...
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...
In Utah, a worker ordinarily need not show that his or her work-related injury was caused by unusual or extraordinary stress or strain. Applying the framework established in Allen v. Industrial Comm’n , 729 P.2d 15 (Utah 1986), and its progeny, however, a state...
In Oregon, the old adage, “The employer takes employees as it finds them,” doesn’t always apply. With regard to occupational disease claims, for example, the claimant must prove that his or her employment was the “major contributing cause” of the disease and further...
In order to obtain reimbursement from the state’s Special Disability Fund pursuant to N.Y. Workers’ Comp. Law § 15(8), it is not enough for the employer or carrier to show that the claimant had one or more previous physical impairments; it must also show that the...
A Nevada employer need not show that it had knowledge of an employee’s specific medical diagnosis in order to receive reimbursement from the state’s Subsequent Injury Fund (“the Fund”). It must, however, prove that it had some sort of knowledge of a preexisting...
A New York appellate court affirmed a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board that awarded workers’ compensation benefits in connection with a construction worker’s fatal heart attack that occurred during his work shift, in spite of that the deceased...
An employee who suffered from polycystic kidney disease at the time he was hired by the employer, who subsequently suffered a compensable injury to his left arm that was unrelated to his kidney disease, and who returned to light duty, but then could not continue...
A New York employer was not entitled to receive reimbursement from the Special Disability Fund pursuant to N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 15(8)(d) unless it could establish three things: (1) that the injured worker had a preexisting permanent impairment that hindered job...
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...
This list of recent noteworthy cases was compiled by Keith J. Kasper of McCormick, Fitzpatrick, Kasper & Buchard, PC. The Voice of The Department, Ellen Gonyaw, the receptionist, has retired after almost 9 years to move to Maine to open a campground...
An Iowa employer is responsible for paying indemnity and medical benefits related to a serious back injury sustained by an employee while helping a friend move go-kart frames onto a trailer since substantial evidence indicated that six weeks earlier the employee...
A 1986 amendment to the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Act’s definition of “injury” to exclude injury or disability “caused primarily by the natural deterioration of tissue, an organ, or part of the body ” [Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 4123.01(C)(2), emphasis added], did...