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Safeway Stores9/26/2002
that the impairment of Watson's left knee was not as great as he claimed. At the hearing on his claim, Watson testified that in March or April of 1999, he began having problems with his right knee swelling and locking up on him. He also presented medical reports from his treating physician, Dr. Dorn, who observed that Watson was "experiencing secondary trauma to the right knee as a result of placing additional pressure on the right knee to protect the injured left knee." More specifically, Dr. Dorn opined that Watson suffered from "internal derangement of the right knee with tears of the medial meniscus, effusion, strain of the medial collateral ligament and degenerative changes," and concluded that he had secondary strains to his right knee resulting from the work-related injury to his left knee. Dr. Dorn also conducted several subsequent examinations in which he consistently diagnosed a secondary strain to the right knee. With respect to the left knee, he concluded that Watson had "extensive degenerative/traumatic arthritis of the left knee and will require total joint replacement," and that he had an "80 percent impairment of the lower left extremity" based on the American Medical Association Guidelines for the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment.
In rebuttal, Safeway produced documentation of Watson's extensive past medical history, testimony from Watson's work supervisor that Watson was able to perform his duties during the period in question, and medical reports by Dr. Marc Danzinger, who had conducted an independent medical evaluation on Safeway's behalf. After reciting Watson's significant past medical history, Dr. Danzinger's report opined:
At this time, the diagnosis for his right knee is a patellofemoral syndrome. He also has a questionable medial meniscal tear seen on the MRI. I find absolutely no evidence of causal relationship between the symptoms he is having to his right knee and the 9/24/98 work injury . I can even go a step further and explain that I find no causal relationship between his current symptomology and osteoarthritis in the left knee and the 9/24/98 accident . . . . Any claims by Dr. Dorn that this transfer of weight to the right knee causing his current symptoms in no way can be correlated to just the incident of 9/24/98 and predispose him. I find it quite a stretch to claim that a medial meniscal tear could have occurred in the right knee without an antecedent injury just because of transfer of weight and stress to the right knee. The current patellofemoral syndrome could be caused by transfer of weight, but I find this in no way related to the 9/24/98 accident and find it much more related to any symptoms he may have from his long-standing osteoarthristis which is part of the degenerative process and related way back to his original injury of 1990. Thus I believe the current right knee problems the patient is having would have developed regardless of the 9/24 left knee injury because of his previous history.
After conducting a second examination Dr. Danzinger again found "no correlation between the claim by Dr. Dorn that transferring weight caused his [right knee] problems and the findings on the MRI . . . ." Although Dr. Danzinger agreed with Dr. Dorn that Watson had reached maximum medical improvement of his left knee, he apportioned seventy-five percent of the disability to pre-September 1998 injuries and only twenty-five percent to the September 1998 injury .
Watson was given leave by the hearing examiner to file supplemental medical treatment information, including an evaluation by Dr. Joel Fechter, who concluded that "as a result of the alteration in the patient's gait due to his [September 1998] work injury, he subsequently developed
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