What the panel ordered
The Petition for Reconsideration is granted. The Findings and Award is amended to find 72% permanent disability without apportionment, remove the finding on medical care for bilateral wrists and hands, award attorney's fees from the life pension, commute the attorney's fees, and otherwise affirm the award.
Applicant filed a Petition for Reconsideration in response to the WCJ's Findings and Award issued on February 6, 2026. The WCJ found 66% permanent partial disability after apportionment. The Petition challenged the AME's apportionment opinions as not substantial evidence. The WCJ's Report recommended denial of reconsideration. The Appeals Board granted reconsideration and amended the award.
What was disputed, and how it came out
Each issue the panel decided, with the reasoning it gave. An outcome is what this panel did on this record — not a rule, and not a prediction.
The Appeals Board found that the AME's apportionment opinions were not substantial evidence due to lack of reasoning, but ultimately credited the AME's approximate apportionment percentages as meeting the burden of proof for defendant, leading to a grant of reconsideration and amendment of the award to 72% permanent disability without apportionment.
From the decision · page 6A. The burden of proving apportionment of permanent disability falls on the employer because it is the employer that benefits from apportionment. (Benson v. Workers' Comp. Appeals Bd. (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th 1535, 1560 [74 Cal.Comp.Cases 113]; Kopping v. Workers' Comp. Appeals Bd. (2006) 142 Cal.App.4th 1099, 1115 [71 Cal.Comp.Cases 1229]; Escobedo v. Marshalls (2005) 70 Cal.Comp.Cases 604, 612 (Appeals Board en banc).) In Escobedo the Appeals Board held: (1) section 4663 requires the reporting physician to make an apportionment determination; (2) apportionment to other factors allows apportionment to causation, including pathology, prior conditions, and retroactive work restrictions; (3) applicant holds the initial burden to prove industrial injury and also has the added burden of establishing the approximate percentage of permanent disability directly related to the industrial injury; (4) defendant has the burden of establishing the approximate permanent disability caused by other factors; and (5) a medical report addressing apportionment may not be relied upon unless it constitutes substantial evidence. (Escobedo, supra, at p. 607.)