Opinion ID: 705181
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: workers' compensation exclusivity

Text: 53 Mobil also contends that California's workers' compensation laws, Cal.Labor Code Secs. 132a and 3600-3602, are the exclusive remedy for Jimeno's discrimination claim because a work-related injury to his back caused the work restrictions which led to his termination. Jimeno counters that the 1992 amendments to the FEHA, 1992 Cal.Stat. ch. 912 Sec. 5 (AB 1286) and ch. 913 Sec. 23 (AB 1077), eliminate the exclusive remedy provisions of the workers' compensation laws. Further, he claims that workers' compensation provisions are inapplicable to his claim because Mobil terminated him because of the spondylolysis, a non-work-related developmental defect, and not because of his degenerative disc condition, a back problem which may be aggravated by heavy work. 54
55
56 Because the workers' compensation provisions were enacted prior to the FEHA to provide a specific remedy for employer discrimination based on work-related injuries, the California Supreme Court, prior to the 1992 amendments to the FEHA, interpreted Labor Code Sec. 132a broadly as the exclusive remedy for any type of employer discrimination against workers because of injuries occurring in the course of and arising out of their employment. Judson Steel Corp. v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Bd., 22 Cal.3d 658, 150 Cal.Rptr. 250, 586 P.2d 564 (1978); accord, Palmer v. Roadway Express, Inc., 664 F.Supp. 458 (N.D.Cal.1987); see Labor Code Secs. 3600-3602 and Sec. 132a. Several California appellate courts held specifically that the workers' compensation laws preclude a cause of action based on the physical disability provisions of the FEHA. See, e.g., Denney v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 10 Cal.App.4th 1226, 13 Cal.Rptr.2d 170 (1992); Fortner v. Safeway Stores, Inc., 229 Cal.App.3d 542, 280 Cal.Rptr. 409 (1991), review denied (1991); Pickrel v. General Telephone Co., 205 Cal.App.3d 1058, 252 Cal.Rptr. 878 (1988), review denied (1989). 57 We cannot, however, decide whether workers' compensation provides the exclusive remedy for discrimination based on work-related injury without considering the California Supreme Court's decision in Shoemaker v. Myers, 52 Cal.3d 1, 276 Cal.Rptr. 303, 801 P.2d 1054 (1990), and its progeny. Elaborating on its opinion in Cole v. Fair Oaks Fire Protection Dist., 43 Cal.3d 148, 233 Cal.Rptr. 308, 729 P.2d 743 (1987), the court exempted employer conduct that does not stem[ ] from a risk reasonably encompassed within the compensation bargain from the workers' compensation exclusive remedy provisions. Shoemaker, 276 Cal.Rptr. at 313, 801 P.2d at 1064. The court has since applied the Shoemaker test to find that several types of conduct may fall within the exception to workers' compensation exclusivity. See, e.g., Fermino v. Fedco, Inc., 7 Cal.4th 701, 30 Cal.Rptr.2d 18, 872 P.2d 559 (1994) (holding that a claim of false imprisonment by an employer is always outside the scope of the compensation bargain); Gantt v. Sentry Ins., 1 Cal.4th 1083, 4 Cal.Rptr.2d 874, 824 P.2d 680 (1992) (holding that a claim for retaliatory dismissal for supporting a coworker's claim of sexual harassment is not precluded by workers' compensation remedies); Livitsanos v. Superior Court, 2 Cal.4th 744, 7 Cal.Rptr.2d 808, 816, 828 P.2d 1195, 1203 (1992) (suggesting that an employee's emotional distress injury may fall outside the exclusivity provisions). 58 The California appellate courts, in cases decided after the Shoemaker decision, have specifically held that the workers' compensation provisions preclude a cause of action pursuant to the physical disability provisions of the FEHA. See, e.g., Langridge v. Oakland Unified School District, 25 Cal.App.4th 664, 31 Cal.Rptr.2d 34, 36 (1994) (finding that discrimination based on a work-related physical disability is a risk included in the compensation bargain); Angell v. Peterson Tractor, Inc., 21 Cal.App.4th 981, 26 Cal. Rptr.2d 541 (1994) (finding that workers' compensation provides the exclusive remedy for an employee with a work-related heart condition who was discharged wrongfully), review denied (1994); Usher v. American Airlines, Inc., 20 Cal.App.4th 1520, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 335 (1993) (finding that workers' compensation provides the exclusive remedy for an employee claiming constructive termination because of a work-related injury), review denied (1994). These courts grounded their interpretation on the specificity of the workers' compensation provisions and the decision by the legislature to place[ ] work-related disability discrimination within the scope of the workers' compensation laws. Langridge, 31 Cal.Rptr.2d at 36. 8 These recent appellate court decisions are persuasive. 59
60 Jimeno also contends that the 1992 amendments to the FEHA, which became effective for cases pending before the Fair Employment and Housing Commission on or after January 1, 1993, see, e.g., Stats. ch. 913 Sec. 44, 1992 Cal.Adv.Legis.Serv. 3837, 3885 (Deering), eliminate any possibility of workers' compensation exclusivity. Jimeno argues, in effect, that the Legislature's strengthening of the FEHA to incorporate provisions of the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, Pub.L. No. 101-336 (codified as amended in relevant part at 42 U.S.C. Sec. 12101 et seq.), whenever those provisions provide more protection, and the omission of any language explicitly exempting workers with work-related disabilities should be interpreted to mean that the FEHA precludes exclusive application of the workers' compensation provisions. 61 Jimeno cites the Legislative Counsel's Digest for the bill before the California legislature, which indicates that [t]he bill would specify that the act's provisions are not superseded by provisions of other laws relating to workers' compensation and insurance. See Stats. ch. 913, Legislative Counsel's Digest (15), 1992 Cal.Adv.Legis.Serv. 3837, 3850 (Deering) (discussing Assembly Bill 1077). This comment accompanied a proposed new section 12994, 9 which would have eliminated workers' compensation exclusivity, but that provision was never enacted into law because the Senate deleted it in the Senate's June 1, 1992 version of the bill. As a result, the amendments as enacted did not include any new language providing that the FEHA should supersede workers' compensation exclusivity. See Assembly Bill 1077, 1991-92 Legis., Reg.Sess. (as amended in the Senate, June 1, 1992). 62 When, as here, the state high court has not addressed the explicit question at issue, the role of the panel is to determine how that court would rule. Skillsky v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 893 F.2d 1088, 1093 (9th Cir.1990). Although the panel may look for guidance to decisions by intermediate appellate courts, those decisions are not binding if the panel is convinced that the state's supreme court would rule differently. Martinez v. Asarco, Inc., 918 F.2d 1467, 1473 (9th Cir.1990) (disregarding two Arizona appellate decisions). 63 California courts give substantial weight to the deletion of a provision during the drafting stage. The rejection by the Legislature of a specific provision contained in an act as originally introduced is most persuasive to the conclusion that the act should not be construed to include the omitted provision. Rich v. State Board of Optometry, 235 Cal.App.2d 591, 45 Cal.Rptr. 512, 522 (1965); accord, People v. Gangemi, 13 Cal.App.4th 1790, 17 Cal.Rptr.2d 462, 466-67 (1993). 64 The Legislature, in enacting the broad, anti-discriminatory provisions of the FEHA, was aware of the more specific workers' compensation provisions and could have included explicit statements exempting FEHA claims from the exclusivity provisions. Instead, the Legislature declined to enact such a provision as part of the 1992 amendments. Therefore, we hold that the deletion of the provision explicitly eliminating workers' compensation exclusivity makes impossible what was already dubious--the plaintiff's contention that the amendments that were adopted in 1992 had any effect on such exclusivity. Because we find that the 1992 amendments do not eliminate the exclusivity of the workers' compensation remedy, we need not address Jimeno's arguments for retroactive application of the amendments to this case. 65 Therefore, we find that the California workers' compensation provisions provide the exclusive remedy under California law for a work-related physical disability discrimination claim. We must now consider whether Mobil has met its burden to show that a work-related injury was the cause of its decision to terminate Jimeno, thus invoking the exclusive workers' compensation remedies.
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