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Washington Post v. District of Columbia Department of Employment Services6/3/2004
sed or contributed to his or her disability. See Washington Hosp. Ctr., 744 A.2d at 998.
II.
Raymond Reynolds, a mail room employee of The Washington Post, filed a Workers' Compensation Act claim for temporary total disability benefits. Reynolds claimed that he was disabled from September 1996 through March 1997 because an injury that he sustained at work a year earlier, in September 1995, had aggravated a pre-existing arthritic condition in his left knee. The Washington Post contested the claim. The single disputed issue at the ensuing evidentiary hearing was whether Reynolds' disability was causally related to his September 1995 injury. We state the material facts as the hearing examiner found them.
The first time Reynolds suffered an injury to his left knee was in January 1994. That injury caused Reynolds to miss two months of work in 1994 and to remain under the care of an orthopedic surgeon until May 1995. The injury that is the subject of this case occurred on September 9, 1995, when Reynolds jumped off a forklift in an effort to prevent a pallet of waste newspapers from tipping over. Reynolds heard and felt a "popping" in his left knee. He reported to the Employee Health Center, where a nurse treated the knee with ice. Following the incident, Reynolds returned to his regular work schedule. He did not miss work, and except for two subsequent visits to the Health Center for aspirin and ice packs to alleviate swelling and pain in the knee, he did not seek further medical treatment.
Nine months later, in June of 1996, Reynolds suffered a disabling injury to his left shoulder. He was referred to Dr. John Starr, an orthopedic surgeon. In August, while he was still under Dr. Starr's care, Reynolds mentioned that he was experiencing pain in his left knee. Reynolds attributed his knee pain to the trauma he sustained when he jumped off the forklift in September 1995.
Dr. Starr ordered x-rays of the knee, and these were compared with x-rays taken following Reynolds' injury in 1994. Both sets of x-rays revealed that Reynolds suffered from an underlying degenerative condition known as osteochondritis dissecans in the medial femoral condyle of the knee. The new x-rays showed that the condition had deteriorated since 1994: there was additional calcification and other patellofemoral degenerative change. Dr. Kenneth Fine, an orthopedic surgeon and a knee specialist, recommended that Reynolds undergo an abrasion arthroscopy. Reynolds agreed to this procedure, which Dr. Fine performed in December 1996. During the surgery, Dr. Fine removed "loose bodies" of cartilage from the knee and performed a partial meniscectomy after discovering a complex tear of the medial meniscus. The surgery was followed by a course of physical therapy.
Reynolds' shoulder-related disability resolved itself by mid-September 1996, but because of his knee Reynolds remained disabled and unable to return to work full time until March 1997. It was for this six-month period that Reynolds claimed temporary total disability benefits under the Workers' Compensation Act.
The hearing examiner determined that Reynolds was entitled to invoke the presumption available under the Act of a causal relationship between his disability and the knee injury that he sustained on September 9, 1995. This causal relationship was supported, the examiner found, by Reynolds' testimony, the medical records of Drs. Starr and Fine, and a supplemental report in which Dr. Fine stated (though he did not explain his reasoning) that "to the best of my knowledge, this patient's [i.e., Reynolds'] injury was directly caused by the incident occurring at Mr. Reynolds' employment" on September 9, 1995. The
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