Virginia: Inability to Perform Light Work Due to Unrelated Disability Amounts to Unjustified Refusal of Employment

An employee who suffered from polycystic kidney disease at the time he was hired by the employer, who subsequently suffered a compensable injury to his left arm that was unrelated to his kidney disease, and who returned to light duty, but then could not continue the employment due to kidney failure that manifested after the work-related accident, he was not entitled to additional indemnity benefits. The court acknowledged the impact of Virginia’s “two causes rule,” which provides that where a condition has two causes, one related to a work injury, and one not, the condition is nevertheless compensable. In spite of that rule, however, when a non-work-related disability prevents a partially disabled employee from returning to his or her pre-injury work or from accepting selective employment, for purposes of the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act, the unrelated disability is not justification for the employee to refuse or not to perform selective employment. The inability of a disabled employee to do selective work due to an unrelated disability is equivalent to an unjustified refusal of selective employment.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Carrington v. Aquatic Co. & Ins. Co., 2018 Va. App. LEXIS 10 (Jan. 23, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 84.02.

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