Court Opinion

ID: 9528141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:37:42.154224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:32.976973
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
dissenting.
The Workmen’s Compensation Board found that “whatever disability [Ms. Black] may have at the present time is unrelated” to the injuries she suffered in February of 1976 while employed by Universal Services. The question for this court is whether that finding is supported by substantial evidence. I believe that it is and would affirm.
Dr. Pennell’s report directly supports the Board’s conclusion. His diagnosis was that appellant’s complaints result from “an hysterical personality disorder of long standing.” There are indications in the reports of other physicians who had treated appel*1077lant that she was suffering a disability caused by the February 1976 accident. No medical testimony, as distinct from reports, was presented. It is not correct to imply that Dr. Pennell’s diagnosis was entirely different from the conclusions of all of the other physicians who had treated appellant, for most of them noted that her problem had a strong emotional component.
Appellant has a pre-accident history of severe depression; several episodes resulted in hospitalization. Dr. Butler, the physician whose opinion is most favorable to the appellant, expressed the view that her major problem was her psychiatric state. Appellant’s first treating physician, Dr. Young Ha, released appellant for light work as of March 12, 1976. After she returned from her vacation in Greece in April of 1976 he told her she was malingering. Another physician, Dr. Welke, stated that he could not attribute the origin of appellant’s pain in the lower back, or the disc space narrowing observable on x-ray, to the February 1976 episode. He also observed that appellant’s strange manner of walking did not resemble a pain-caused “antalgic limp.” Several other physicians noted instances where appellant seemed to be exaggerating symptoms. A consulting psychologist at the University of Washington Pain Clinic indicated that “depression may have been mislabeled as pain”- by her; but this “wouldn’t account for all of her pain behavior.” The diagnosis of another physician, Dr. Iverson, who saw appellant in October of 1976 was “low back strain complicated by psychophysiological manifestations of depression and paranoia.” At the time of the first hearing, August 1, 1977, appellant’s counsel stated that her current treating physician, Dr. Mead, was not being called as a witness “because I talked to him on the phone and his opinion is that he really doesn’t know what is wrong with her, so all he can do is to treat her symptomatically, that is, treat the symptoms. . .. ”
Based on this record, I do not agree that the evidence supporting the Board’s conclusion is so tenuous and unpersuasive as to require reversal.