Court Opinion

ID: 9726621
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:00:38.870118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:29.160713
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. I would reverse the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals and remand to the compensation judge for a finding on the treatment parameters at issue: “incapacitating low back pain for longer than 3 months.” Minn. R. 5221.6500, subp. 2C(l)(d). The Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals stated that “it is questionable whether the record supports a finding that the employee did not satisfy the treatment parameters.” I agree. The WCCA committed reversible error at this point.
In affirming the comp judge, the WCCA digressed into a choice of experts’ analysis based on a credibility determination. The WCCA thus avoided deciding this case on the merits, ie., the treatment parameters. The majority opinion affirms this digression and misstates the record relating to a finding of the compensation judge that relator “had not had incapacitating lower back pain.” In fact, the compensation judge analyzed the case in terms of left leg pain and instability rather than low back pain. This was clearly erroneous and ignored substantial evidence of lower back pain. The employee testified to constant pain in the low back all the time “and that basically I was just miserable.” As the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals pointed out, the compensation judge failed to analyze the case in terms of or even mention the required low back pain in his findings and spent four pages in its decision analyzing the employee’s complaint of left leg pain and instability.
Obviously, an error was made in the compensation judge’s analysis. This error goes beyond simply a choice between experts. The treatment parameter regulations were designed to remove this uncertainty and to provide the needed health care treatment once the parameters were met. Here, the compensation judge found that there was the required degenerative disc disease with a positive discogram at one or two levels of the spine, but then skipped over the second part of the treatment parameters and decided the case based on the need for treatment rather than determine if there was low back pain. The compensation judge framed the question as follows: “does the employee have the type of ‘pain’ that is ‘incapacitating’ and requires surgery.” First of all, that is not the question to be answered. The proper question relates to whether there was incapacitating lower back pain. If there was, surgery was reasonable and proper pursuant to Minn. R. 5221.6500, subp. 2C(1). Furthermore, as the WCCA pointed out, the term incapacitating lower back pain as used in the treatment parameters does not require total disability. Here, the uncontradicted record is that the employee had experienced constant pain in his low back from 1998 up to the time of *95the surgery, as well as numbness in his left upper thigh with giving out of his left leg. He was not able to keep up normal recreational activities and was unable to sleep or sit secondary to the pain.
The compensation judge based .his decision on the belief that relator did not have consistent symptoms, which would indicate the need for a fusion surgery. The compensation judge then wrote in his findings “having thus made numerous circuits of the proverbial barn it appears that the final dispute comes down to what it essentially always comes down to, a credibility judgment by the Compensation Judge.” The compensation judge then digressed to analyze only the left leg pain and concluded that “the employee did not have consistent symptoms which would indicate the need for a fusion surgery,” and adopted the opinions of Dr. Daniel Ahlberg as set forth in his report as to why he did not believe surgery was reasonable and necessary.
These findings do not address the treatment parameter of incapacitating back pain nor did the compensation judge make any credibility determination based on the relator’s testimony about low back pain. Rather, the compensation judge converted his decision into a dispute between the two experts as to whether or not this type of surgery would be recommended. The credibility determination related solely to the leg pain with no findings or discussion on low back pain. Indeed, Dr. Ahlberg does not even opine on the ultimate issue of whether or not there is a history of incapacitating back pain, but uses an incorrect analysis. The WCCA also erred when it based its decision on a choice of experts rather than the low back treatment parameter. The findings are to be directed to the treatment parameters, not the treatment.
Accordingly, I would reverse and remand to the compensation judge for appropriate findings on the treatment parameter at issue whether relator had incapacitating low back pain for longer than 3 months.