Court Opinion

ID: 9702129
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:56:14.650385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:33.880247
License: Public Domain

SCOTT, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
Although I concur in the majority’s conclusions that the WCCA had the authority to remand this matter for additional testimony and to direct the compensation judge to enter findings on all issues and that if a “proceeding” was commenced within the time limitation of section 176.151(1) the employee may prove his claim for permanent partial disability resulting from his early injuries, I respectfully dissent from the conclusion that the employee’s permanent partial disability must be apportioned among his various injuries.
Here, the employee suffered a variety of injuries for which he never received permanent partial disability but which the employer now claims contributed to this disability. I would hold that any uncompensated disability resulting from these earlier injuries is a preexisting condition, which, if substantially aggravated by his last work injury, should be fully compensable at the rate applicable to that final injury. In Vanda v. Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., 300 Minn. 515, 516, 218 N.W.2d 458, 458 (1974), we stated:
[W]hen the usual tasks ordinary to an employee’s work substantially aggravate, accelerate, or combine with a preexisting disease or latent condition to produce a disability, the entire disability is compensable, no apportionment being made on the basis of relative causal contribution of the preexisting condition and the work activities.
(Citations omitted). I would, therefore, reverse the WCCA with regard to apportionment and hold that, in this case, there should be no apportionment of the employee’s permanent partial disability but instead the whole permanent partial disability should be compensated at the rate applicable to the last compensable personal injury-
We have also held that when an employee suffers both specific injuries and a Gil*514lette injury, equitable apportionment is “applicable only in those rare cases in which substantial and almost uncontroverted medical testimony will permit a precise allocation of responsibility between or among different employers or insurers for the employee’s disability.” Michels v. American Hoist & Derrick, 269 N.W.2d 57, 59 (Minn.1978). Because we are remanding the issue of the alleged Gillette injury, the compensation judge may again find that this employee indeed suffered such an injury. If there were a Gillette injury, apportionment would be inappropriate because the medical testimony is not almost uncontroverted. Dr. Wengler attributes twice as much disability to the 1969 laminectomy as does Dr. Lutter. Dr. Wengler, moreover, attributes four times more of the disability to the forklift accident than does Dr. Boxall. This certainly is not uncontroverted testimony and, therefore, there should be no apportionment.