The normal presumption that the claimant’s treating physician is entitled to more credibility than the defendant’s evaluating physician does not always apply.

The claimant’s physician indicated he could do no more for him in September 2009, nine months after the claimant’s initial work-related knee and hip injury. The claimant sought no treatment from 2009 to 2013. The claimant had three additional injuries between February 2010 and September 2013, none of which were work related. The Board concluded that the claimant failed to meet the burden of proving that his current need for left knee surgery was causally related to the original 2009 work injury. In so doing, the Board accepted the testimony of the employer’s medical expert as credible on the causation issue and commented that he had seen the claimant both close in time to the original injury as well as more recently. Given the fact that the claimant also had three intervening events and had gone four years without any treatment for the left knee injury, the Board concluded that it was more likely than not that the claimant’s current need for medical treatment was unrelated to the 2009 work injury.

Case Law Alerts, 1st Quarter, January 2015