Court Opinion

ID: 9677968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:07:21.859999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:00.696281
License: Public Domain

GRAVES, Justice, Dissenting.
I dissent from so much of the majority’s opinion that states it is rational and reasonable to conclude that physicians engaged in academic medicine at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville will probably provide a more objective or accurate diagnostic assessment than an equally or better credentialed physician who may work elsewhere. The legislature’s affording presumptive weight to the clinical findings and opinions of local medical school teachers is myopic. *99There is no rational reason to believe a university physician is better qualified solely because he works in Lexington or Louisville. It is unreasonable to give presumptive weight to University of Kentucky and University of Louisville physicians’ views over other equally well-qualified and highly motivated physicians located throughout this Commonwealth and the United States.
Under KRS 342.315(2), the evaluator from the University of Kentucky or the University of Louisville diagnoses the worker’s medical condition. Based upon the medical conclusions of the university physician, it is mandatorily presumed that this physician’s opinion is correct. This is nothing more than sophistical conjecture. No rational connection exists between the fact that one is a University of Kentucky or University of Louisville physician, and the fact that an opinion from such a physician is presumptively correct. While both are accredited medical schools, the physicians working there are no more clinically successful than well-credentialed physicians at places such as Vanderbilt, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo Clinic, merely due to their place of employment.
The purpose of this presumption is to reduce litigation over conflicting medical evidence. However, the means used to reach this arguably proper purpose (giving presumptive weight to university doctors’ conclusions) is not rationally related to any legitimate state interests. The haphazard results caused by this presumption show the unjust and irrational consequences that it produces. A case is totally built or destroyed based upon the university evaluation, and not upon the objective weighing of all the medical evidence by the Arbitrator and/or ALJ. Instead, the Arbitrator/ALJ must view the evidence presumptively in favor of the university report. The irrational results of this presumption exceed the reasonable and legitimate interest of the people, causing it to violate Section 2 of the Constitution of Kentucky which states as follows:
Absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of free men exists nowhere in a Republic, not even in the largest majority.
KRS 342.315(2) places an arbitrary power in a small privileged class and is therefore unconstitutional. The majority opinion fails to save its constitutionality by adding the qualification “unless that testimony is properly rebutted by the opponent of the evidence.”