In E & J Gallo Winery v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (— Cal.Rptr. 3d —, 2005 WL 3471631, Cal.App. 5 Dist., Dec. 20, 2005), a California Court of Appeal grappled with how to apportion liability for two separate work-related injuries under the terms of Senate Bill 899, California’s newly enacted workers’ compensation reform law. It determined that the worker was entitled to be compensated for his total level of disability, less the dollar amount of any percentage of disability previously awarded.
Facts
David Dykes was injured on two different occasions while on the job as a winery worker for E & J Gallo Winery (Gallo), in 1996 and again in 2002. After his first injury, a workers’ compensation administrative law judge (WCJ) approved a stipulation that his injury left him 20.5 percent permanently disabled, and entitled him to payments totaling $11,680 in compensation. Eventually, Dykes’ condition improved and he returned to work.
In 2002, Dykes injured his back on the job again. After this second injury, a WCJ found that he was now 73 percent permanently disabled, and as a result determined that given his age and occupation, he was entitled to compensation payments totaling $104,305, less the $11,680 in compensation paid following his first injury.
Gallo appealed to the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (Board), saying the percentage of Dykes’ prior disability should have been deducted from his new disability, and the difference used to calculate the level of compensation for his second injury. The practical difference is that higher levels of disability bring exponentially higher payments. Therefore Gallo would have saved tens of thousands of dollars paying for the lower percentage of disability, rather than having the dollar value of its prior payments simply deducted from the higher compensation following the second injury. The Board denied Gallo’s appeal and upheld the WCJ decision. Gallo petitioned the court for review.
Appellate Court Decision
By the time the appellate court received this case, the California Legislature had enacted Senate Bill 899, changing the way liability is apportioned and payments are determined in workers’ compensation cases. The court said it had to review the language of the law and the intent of the Legislature to determine how the new law applied to this case. It compared the language in the Labor Code sections repealed by the Legislature to the language in the newly enacted code sections.
It found that the repealed language imposed liability only “for the portion due to the later injury as though no prior disability or impairment had existed.” But Senate Bill 899 reversed that policy, the court said, and now a prior award is presumed to exist as a means of establishing the level of permanent disability directly caused by the second injury. As a result, the court concluded, the new language “contemplates accumulating multiple disability awards rather than subtracting percentage levels of disability.”
As a result, it concluded that Dykes was entitled to the full dollar value of compensation based on his 73 percent disability, not lower payments based on a 52.5 percent disability (determined by subtracting the prior 20.5 percent.) Only the dollar value of prior payments could be deducted, the court said.
This conclusion, the court said, ensured that Dykes was adequately compensated and that Gallo was responsible for the level of injury arising from employment. It also ensures that compensation is based on the level of disability, not on the number of injuries. “Gallo cannot reasonably argue that it is not liable to the full extent of Dykes’ 73 percent disability, whether the result of one or multiple industrial injuries,” the court concluded.
The Board’s order was therefore affirmed.
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