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Young v. Hickory Business Furniture3/21/2000
y related to the prior compensable injury." The Commission states, however, that it "[gave] no weight to this opinion inasmuch as Dr. Winfield has no expertise concerning fibromyalgia." Regarding Dr. Payne's testimony on cross-examination, the Commission states the following in Finding of Fact #18:
Defendants' counsel's cross-examination of Dr. Payne did not result in a change of his opinion that plaintiff had disabling fibromyalgia caused or aggravated by her March 3, 1992, injury by accident. Nothing elicited by such cross examination causes the Full Commission to modify its finding of facts.
Since the Commission was well within its authority to reject what it deemed to be unreliable evidence, defendants' argument is without merit.
Defendants next argue that the Commission erred in finding and concluding that plaintiff's fibromyalgia was causally related to her 3 March 1992 injury . Defendants' chief contention is that because the etiology of fibromyalgia cannot be scientifically or objectively determined, Dr. Payne's opinion as to the cause of plaintiff's condition is no more than speculation and conjecture. Again, we disagree.
The Industrial Commission is vested with full authority to find the essential facts in a workers' compensation case, Bailey, 131 N.C. App. at 653, 508 S.E.2d at 834, and it is the responsibility of the Commission, not the reviewing court, to weigh the evidence of causation and to assess its credibility, id. at 653, 508 S.E.2d at 835. Therefore, this Court can do no more than examine the record to determine whether any competent evidence exists to support the Commission's findings as to causation, and we are not at liberty "to weigh the evidence and then decide the issue on the basis of its weight." Porter, 133 N.C. App. at 26, 514 S.E.2d at 520. " hen conflicting evidence is presented, `the Commission's finding of causal connection between the accident and the disability is conclusive.'" Bailey, 131 N.C. App. at 655, 508 S.E.2d at 835 (quoting Anderson v. Lincoln Construction Co., 265 N.C. 431, 434, 144 S.E.2d 272, 275 (1965)).
Defendants maintain that Dr. Payne's testimony regarding the cause of plaintiff's condition should have been excluded as unreliable. Defendants take the position that the lack of definitive scientific methodology verifying the cause and effect relationship between plaintiff's compensable injury and her subsequent fibromyalgia rendered Dr. Payne's opinion incompetent and inadmissible. However, Dr. Payne, as an expert in the field of rheumatology and the treatment of fibromyalgia, was in a better position than the fact-finding body to draw a conclusion from the relevant circumstances as to what brought on plaintiff's current condition. The Commission was then free to receive this testimony and adopt Dr. Payne's conclusion as fact. Thus, contrary to defendants' assertion, we conclude that plaintiff has met her burden of establishing a causal connection between the fibromyalgia and her 3 March 1992 injury in terms of "reasonable medical probability."
Dr. Payne testified that " ibromyalgia is a clinical diagnosis," which means that it is diagnosed "based on history and examination rather than doing any type of testing or x-ray studies." He stated that fibromyalgia "produces soft tissue pain and tenderness . . . in very characteristic locations in a person's body." Dr. Payne further stated that "[plaintiff] had the tender points and they were in the characteristic locations that we see in this problem." He indicated that "[plaintiff] fulfill the American College of Rheumatology criteria for fibromyalgia." According to Dr. Payne, "reactive fibromyalgia" is related, in time, to a particular event and
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