Opinion ID: 2624993
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Board Applied the Correct Legal Standard in Considering Whether an Occupational Injury Was a Substantial Factor in Lopez's Disability.

Text: Lopez also argues that the Board applied the incorrect legal standard in denying her claim for occupational disability benefits. Highlighting the Board's factual finding that her 1996 injury was not so significant in and of itself to have been a substantial factor in her current state of disability, (emphasis added) Lopez contends that the Board erred as a matter of law either by requiring her to prove that her 1996 injury was the sole cause of her disability, or by requiring her to prove that her 1996 injury worsened her underlying condition rather than merely worsening its symptoms. PERS contends, however, that the Board only required Lopez to prove that her work-related injuries were a substantial factor in her disability. Upon review, we find that the Board correctly required Lopez to prove only that a work-related injury or condition was a substantial factor in her disability. An employee will be eligible for occupational disability benefits if a work-related injury or hazard is the proximate cause of a disability that prevents her from working. [16] In State, Public Employees' Retirement Board v. Cacioppo, we held that [i]f one or more possible causes of a disability are occupational, benefits will be awarded where the record establishes that the occupational injury is a substantial factor in the employee's disability regardless of whether a nonoccupational injury could independently have caused disability. [17] In Hester, we further held that a work-related injury can be a substantial factor in an employee's disability if it aggravates the symptoms of an underlying health condition, even if it has no effect on the underlying health condition itself. [18] Correctly citing Cacioppo as the controlling legal authority, the Board found that Lopez's 1996 injury simply masked the ongoing referral of pain from her degenerating hip, that Lopez was not suffering from a degenerative back condition, and that the cause of Lopez's disability was the degenerative arthritis in her hip, which had no substantial relationship to any job hazard or incident. The Board did not, in other words, find that Lopez would have been disabled either by her arthritic hip or by her back, but instead found that the sole cause of Lopez's disability was her arthritic hip. Accordingly, because not even one ... possible cause[ ] of [Lopez's] disability was occupational, [19] the Board correctly applied our holding in Cacioppo in finding that Lopez's occupational injury was not a substantial factor in her disability. Although a work-related injury can be a substantial factor in a disability if it aggravates the symptoms of an underlying health condition, the injury must have a causal connection to the worsening of those symptoms for the injury to aggravate them. [20] The Board found, however, that the lasting pain Lopez experienced after her 1996 injury was caused by her hip problems rather than by the injury, and that the 1996 injury simply served to maskrather than to aggravatethe ongoing referral of pain from Lopez's degenerating hip. Because the 1996 injury did not cause the aggravated symptomsthe lasting and severe pain that disabled Lopez, the Board did not err in finding that the 1996 injury was not a substantial factor in Lopez's disability.