Opinion ID: 705181
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: 66
67 The California workers' compensation provisions require that a compensable injury must aris[e] out of and in the course of employment. Cal.Labor Code Sec. 3600. In Maher v. Workers' Comp. Appeals Bd., 33 Cal.3d 729, 190 Cal.Rptr. 904, 661 P.2d 1058 (1983) (en banc), the California high court established that an employee's injury meets the second prong of the test, in the course of employment, when the injury occurs because the employee does those reasonable things which his contract with his employment expressly or impliedly permits him to do. Id., 190 Cal.Rptr. at 906, 661 P.2d at 1060. The parties do not dispute the applicability of this prong of the test, even though Jimeno first experienced the back pain at home over the weekend. 68 An injury meets the first prong of the definition, arising out of the employment, if it occur[s] by reason of a condition or incident of [the] employment such that the employment and the injury ... [are] linked in some causal fashion. Id. (citations omitted). Although the statute explicitly applies only if the injury is proximately caused by the employment, Cal.Labor Code Sec. 3600(c), the Maher court noted that this requires only that the employment be one of the contributing causes without which the injury would not have occurred. Maher, 190 Cal.Rptr. at 906 n. 3, 661 P.2d at 1060 n. 3 (interpreting the statute liberally to permit employee to recover for injuries from employer-mandated treatment of a preexisting illness). The statutory medical eligibility requirement for designation as a qualified injured worker supports this definition of proximate cause by requiring that [t]he employee's expected permanent disability as a result of the injury, whether or not combined with the effects of a prior injury or disability, if any, [must] permanently preclude[ ] ... the employee from engaging in his or her usual occupation. Cal.Labor Code Sec. 4635 (emphasis added). Thus, one California court explicitly held that an employee is entitled to such benefits for a preexisting injury or disability, whether industrially caused or not, when a later injury on the job aggravates that condition. Fortner v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 280 Cal.Rptr. at 412 (finding that workers' compensation provisions barred other remedies for an employee's painful feet condition which had been aggravated by the employer's requirement that she wear closed-toe shoes at work). 69
70 Under de novo review of a directed verdict, this court views the evidence in the light most favorable to appellant in deciding whether there was no credible formulation of the evidence to support Jimeno's claim that the disability for which he was terminated did not arise out of his employment. See In re Hawaii Federal Asbestos Cases, 960 F.2d 806, 816 (9th Cir.1992). 71
72 Jimeno claims that the lower back pain he experienced at least once in 1983 and once in 1990, possibly caused by heavy work exacerbating his acknowledged degenerative disc condition, did not make him unfit to work. Instead, he claims that undisputed evidence presented at trial established that Mobil terminated him because of work restrictions, that work restrictions were necessary solely as prophylactic protection for Jimeno's non-work-related spondylitic bone defect rather than for work-related cumulative injuries that may have aggravated Jimeno's mildly calcified disc condition, and that Mobil had been informed of the developmental defect and knowingly terminated Jimeno because of that defect. 73 First, Jimeno provided evidence that at least some other workers with arguably more serious disc conditions were not given equivalent work restrictions. Jimeno's expert witness, Dr. London, testified that degenerative disc disease occurs in many individuals and may be exacerbated by heavy work but would not usually require work restrictions. London compared Jimeno's conditions to medical information provided on two other workers who continued to work at Mobil without work restrictions in spite of similar or more serious degenerative disc disease, but who had no spondylitic defects. 74 Second, Jimeno produced evidence to support his claims that the work restrictions were related only to the developmental defect and that Mobil knew that it was the defect, not the degenerative disc disease, that required permanent work restrictions. London testified that the work restrictions imposed on Jimeno were necessary solely as a prophylactic safeguard because of the spondylitic defect. Jimeno demonstrated that Mobil knew at the time of the May 1990 decision to place Jimeno on medical leave because of work restrictions that Jimeno had both a degenerative condition that might be aggravated by heavy work and a non-work-related impairment that had not been aggravated in any way by the employment up to that time. The degenerative disc disease was originally noted as a possible source of work-related pain in Dr. Dallas' March 1990 report. 10 Dr. Dallas included information about the spondylitic defect for the first time in his April 1990 report on the results of the CT scan. Dallas impliedly linked the spondylitic defect to the work restrictions by virtue of his May 23, 1990 report that [c]onsideration for a job analysis on this patient may be given as the patient's CT scan was abnormal and I feel that he may be at risk performing heavy work on a regular basis with associated repetitive bending, lifting, and stooping activities. Mobil conceded that it was this report that led Dr. Wald, the head of Mobil's medical clinic, to place Jimeno on medical leave. Dr. Van Pelt's first review of Jimeno's condition on May 14, 1991 confirmed the existence of a spondylitic defect without any slippage. 11 Van Pelt also suggested that the degenerative arthritic condition could be the source of Jimeno's lower back pain. More significantly, Dr. Van Pelt's second review on June 11, 1991, after receiving the job analysis, indicated that [m]y only reservation would be the fact that he has the spondylitic defect in his lower back and the repetitive lifting of heavy objects as listed in the job analysis could be detrimental. This evidence would support a reasonable jury's conclusion that Mobil terminated Jimeno solely because it was concerned that Jimeno's heavy work on the job could potentially cause a slippage of the developmental spondylitic defect and not because it had concluded that the cumulative work-related exacerbation of his degenerative disc condition rendered him unfit to continue working. If that were the jury's conclusion, Mobil would not satisfy the contributory cause requirement for workers' compensation preemption. 75
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