Opinion ID: 705181
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mobil's evidence of compensable injury.

Text: 76 Mobil argues that Jimeno's termination resulted from injuries to his back from the cumulative effects of strenuous labor at the refinery and not from the spondylitic defect. Mobil describes the defect as a secret handicap that Dr. London found but that nobody else had focused on as an independent isolated disabling condition. Mobil claims that it consistently regarded Jimeno as having a work-related disability, not a physical disability unconnected with his employment. In addition, Mobil claims that Jimeno's workers' compensation claims and testimony at trial that he did not consider himself disabled constitute admissions of work-related injury that are not consistent with the FEHA claim. 77 We conclude that Mobil's evidence is not so overwhelming as to require judgment as a matter of law on this issue in Mobil's favor. First, the medical records of Drs. Quinio, Wald, Dallas, and Van Pelt were admitted solely for the purpose of establishing the information available to Mobil and not to establish the truth of their contents. Thus, Dr. London's expert testimony regarding the two impairments and the causal relationship between the spondylitic defect and the work restrictions is especially significant. Yet the district judge relied explicitly on the contents of the medical reports in concluding that the injury for which Jimeno was terminated was a compensable one. 78 Second, Jimeno's admission at trial that he did not consider himself handicapped is ambiguous. The layperson's sense of handicap is different from the legal definition under particular statutes. Jimeno's testimony can be understood to mean that, although he knows that he has a spinal defect, he also knows that he can maintain basic life activities without restrictions other than a minimal accommodation of workload to limit heavy weightlifting. This is consistent with Jimeno's claim pursuant to the regarded as prong of the FEHA definition of handicapped. See supra Section II. It may also mean that Jimeno believes that the degenerative disc condition is not permanently disabling even though it may cause him to suffer lower back pain at times. His statement is thus not dispositive of the issue. 79 Similarly, Jimeno's simultaneous petition under Cal.Labor Code Sec. 132a claiming discrimination does not conflict necessarily with his FEHA claim. First, a reasonable jury could consider both the workers' compensation and the FEHA claims to be realistic, separate, and independent claims dealing with different factual aspects of a complex situation. According to this first alternative, Jimeno's different back conditions resulted in unrelated management responses that were discriminatory: initially, Mobil required him to take medical leave for the degenerative arthritic condition that was aggravated by work when other similarly situated individuals were allowed to continue working, providing the basis for a workers' compensation claim; and later, Mobil terminated Jimeno to protect itself from potential future claims of injury after learning that the developmental defect required work restrictions. Alternatively, a reasonable jury could accept the pending workers' compensation claim and petition as an alternative legal hypothesis in the event that the FEHA claim fails, whereby Jimeno asserts for the workers' compensation claim that Mobil unreasonably terminated him because of work restrictions that it considered necessary to prevent further exacerbation of his degenerative disc disease. Because Jimeno could not be certain what caused Mobil's actions, it was necessary for him to preserve his option to pursue the workers' compensation claim. 80 Mobil inappropriately relies on Fortner, 280 Cal.Rptr. 409. In that case, it was uncontroverted that work conditions had exacerbated a pre-existing problem and that work-related pain made the plaintiff unable to work. Both the plaintiff and every physician who examined plaintiff acknowledged that plaintiff's pain was increased by the Safeway requirement that she wear closed-toe shoes. Fortner, 280 Cal.Rptr. at 412 n. 2. Here, however, a reasonable jury could conclude, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to Jimeno, that the injury for which Jimeno was terminated was not work-related in any way. Because a directed verdict on this issue is inappropriate, we vacate the district court's decision on this issue and remand for further proceedings in accord with this decision. 81