Supreme Court Rejects Claimant’s IR Appeal
The Texas Supreme Court denied a petition for review on May 29, 2015 in the case of Texas Property & Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association for Reliance National Insurance Company, an Impaired Carrier v. Campos, 453 SW3d 590 (Tex. App. — 8th Dist., 2014, pet. denied).
The case involved a claimant’s appeal from a decision of the appeals panel that his treating doctor’s impairment rating should not be adopted. The claimant argued that he was entitled to a 30 percent impairment rating that was calculated using the range-of-motion model in the AMA Guides. He also argued that the carrier was not entitled to contest the 30 percent rating by using an argument that the rating was improperly calculated. His argument contented that the “issue” of the validity of the 30 percent rating had not been raised in the Division proceedings below and that the carrier was, therefore, precluded from raising it on judicial review. The supreme court rejected the argument.
The court of appeals had rejected the claimant’s argument with the following reasoning:
The Carrier sought summary judgment on several grounds. The Carrier not only contended the 30% impairment rating assessed by Dr. Mehaffey was invalid as a matter of law because it utilized the ROM model and was thus not assessed in accordance with the AMA Guides,5 but also contended that even if use of the ROM Model had been permissible under the Guides, Dr. Mehaffey’s impairment rating did not properly follow that Model in calculating the impairment rating, and further contended that Dr. Mehaffey’s report failed to comply with the Division Rule 130.1(c)(3) for the certification of impairment ratings.6 The Carrier also argued Campos had no evidence to show he was entitled to reimbursement of travel expenses and that Campos could not recover attorney’s fees for bringing suit since he, not the Carrier, had filed suit to review the Appeals Panel decision.7 In both his response to the Carrier’s motion for summary judgment and in his brief in this Court, however, Campos addressed only the ground that Dr. Mehaffey’s 30% impairment rating was invalid as a matter of law because it utilized the ROM model in contravention of the AMA Guides, arguing that this “issue” could not be considered under Section 410.302(b) of the Texas Labor Code, because it was not an issue “decided by the appeals panel.” Campos’ failure in the trial court and in this Court to address all the grounds raised by the Carrier compels this Court to affirm the summary judgment.
FOLIO
