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Ferrara v. Hospital of St. Raphael8/3/1999
The plaintiff, Diane Ferrara, appeals from the decision of the workers' compensation review board (board) affirming the commissioner's finding and award of compensation to the plaintiff. The plaintiff raises several issues on appeal, all of which argue essentially that the medical expert testimony did not support certain findings and Conclusions reached by the commissioner. The plaintiff claims that the commissioner improperly (1) failed to apply the correct test of causation for the plaintiff's injuries and relied on the defendant's independent medical examiner, (2) found that certain problems were not compensable, (3) found that Catherine Kennedy, a psychiatrist, was not a treating physician, (4) reached legally contradictory and inconsistent Conclusions and (5) found that the plaintiff had reached maximum medical improvement. We affirm the decision of the board.
The commissioner held a hearing on September 26, 1995, and found the following facts. The plaintiff was, at all relevant times, an employee of the defendant, Hospital of St. Raphael (hospital). On August 26, 1991, the plaintiff was working as a nurse at the hospital when she sustained a non-surgical low back injury when she attempted to lift a patient. The injury was compounded by numerous prior low back injuries and groin pulls that the plaintiff had suffered while performing her duties as a nurse. The compensability of the injury was accepted by voluntary agreement.
The plaintiff remained out of work through the end of 1992, at which point she was terminated from her employment at the hospital. The plaintiff, thereafter, suffered anxiety over the loss of her job, financial problems and marital difficulties. The various medical personnel reviewing the plaintiff's case uniformly recognized her as suffering from depression and recommended treatment. During this time, the plaintiff completed a master's program and graduated with a dean's list average.
The commissioner reviewed the evidence and found that the plaintiff's low back symptomatology combined with her depression and pain syndrome caused her to be totally disabled through August 23, 1994. The commissioner also found that the plaintiff's psychological depression was compensable, but had been resolved as of November 10, 1993. He ordered the defendant insurer to pay, in full, the bills of all but three of the physicians who had treated her, and to pay two other insurers in part. Further, the commissioner concluded that the plaintiff had reached maximum medical improvement as of August 23, 1994, but remained with a 10 percent permanent partial disability of the low back.
Both the plaintiff and the defendants petitioned for a review of the finding and award of the commissioner, each raising multiple claims on appeal. On November 14, 1997, the board upheld the decision in all respects, finding that the testimony and evidence supported the commissioner's decision. This appeal followed.
We first note our standard of review. "The appropriate standard applicable to the board when reviewing a decision of a commissioner is well established. he review [board's] hearing of an appeal from the commissioner is not a de novo hearing of the facts. . . . t is obligated to hear the appeal on the record and not retry the facts. . . . he power and duty of determining the facts rests on the commissioner, the trier of facts. . . . he Conclusions drawn by him from the facts found must stand unless they result from an incorrect application of the law to the subordinate facts or from an inference illegally or unreasonably drawn from them. . . . The commissioner's Conclusions are accorded the same deference as that given to similar Conclusions of a
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