The West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Board of Review improperly calculated an injured worker’s permanent partial disability award because it relied on an erroneous method for determining impairment, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Monday.
David Lester injured his back and other body parts in an April 2017 fall while working for Logan-Mingo Area Mental Health Inc. He had a previous workers comp claim in 1999 for similar back injuries that resulted in a 20% permanent partial disability award.
In the subsequent case, a physician determined Mr. Lester had a 19% whole-person impairment attributable to the 2017 injuries, but another doctor performing a claim review used a different method of apportioning Mr. Lester’s preexisting impairment, which resulted in a 10% permanent partial disability award.
A workers comp judge affirmed a claim administrator’s decision to award 10% permanent partial disability. Mr. Lester appealed, and the review board reversed, granting a 19% award.
Logan-Mingo argued the review board erred in using an apportionment method that resulted in Mr. Lester receiving a cumulative permanent partial disability award that exceeded his actual total whole-person impairment.
The West Virginia Supreme Court agreed, saying that to accurately apportion preexisting impairments, a claimant’s final degree of permanent partial disability from injuries to multiple body parts should first be calculated using a combined values chart.