Ohio: Claimant Establishes Aggravation Claim in Spite of Paucity of Objective Evidence

In a divided decision, an Ohio appellate court held that a trial court committed error in granting summary judgment to a hospital employer regarding a nursing assistant’s workers’ compensation claim in which the assistant claimed her preexisting conditions were substantially aggravated by a work injury—she was kicked by a patient. Although the nursing assistant did not present pre-injury medical documentation as to the alleged preexisting conditions—there was none due to a lack of symptoms—she did report her symptomology to her treating physician who reached a medical conclusion that there indeed had been “substantial aggravation.” The dissent pointed out that the physician had admitted that he could not demonstrate any grounds for his conclusion, other than the patient’s subjective complaints. The dissenting judge argued that while “subjective complaints” might be evidence of substantial aggravation, such complaints, without objective evidence, were insufficient to substantiate a substantial aggravation.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Schaefer v. Lake Hosp. Sys., 2018-Ohio-3970, 2018 Ohio App. LEXIS 4283 (Sept. 28, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 128.05.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law