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Edmiston v. City of Hobbs and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.6/17/1997
ury and Claimant's preexisting impairment."); see also (determining that the legislature intended the statutory formula in Sections 52-1-26 to -26.4 be applied in light of the precedent established by Reynolds).
{14} Second, we reject Employer's argument that the legislature regarded an employer's ability to recover under the SIA as a prerequisite for a worker's receiving compensation benefits. Employer cites no authority for this proposition, and with good reason. The language of the SIA counters such an argument: "the Subsequent Injury Act shall not be construed to . . . affect in any way the workers' compensation benefits due to an injured employee." NMSA 1978, § 52-2-2(D) (Repl. Pamp 1991). We have previously noted that the legislature enacted the SIA in response to the rule articulated in Reynolds allowing employee compensation for aggravation of a latent preexisting condition. . But this is not to say that in every case where Reynolds would apply, the SIA must necessarily come to an employer's aid; or put another way, that if the SIA would not help an employer, Reynolds and Leo do not apply. The SIA deals only with known conditions, because its purpose was to encourage employers to hire workers with impairments; if the impairment was unknown, the employer would need no encouragement. The legislature struck a balance between fairly compensating an injured worker and protecting an employer who hires a worker with a preexisting condition. We also observe that the legislature recently eliminated an employer's recovery under the SIA while retaining the employer's responsibility under the Workers' Compensation Act. See §§ 52-2-1, -14 (Cum. Supp. 1996).
{15} It is true that the Workers' Compensation Act establishes some causal limits to an employer's responsibility. The accidental injury must have been work related and any resulting disability must be the natural and direct result of the accident. See §§ 52-1-9, -28. In ), the worker had suffered a back injury at work and a year later was diagnosed with breast cancer. We did not allow the worker to receive compensation for disability based upon the combined effect of the work-related injury and the later unrelated illness. . We reached a similar result in ) in which the worker had sustained a scheduled injury to his hand and later became totally disabled due to emphysema. This Court concluded that an illness which was not causally connected to either the compensable injury or to employment could not be combined with the work injury to increase compensation benefits. Id. In both those cases, however, the diseases had no connection to the workplace injury. In contrast, in Reynolds, the worker's preexisting osteoporosis did combine with the back fracture to produce a single disability. In Leo, treatment for the worker's back injury was restricted by the preexisting heart and lung problems. In both cases, there was evidence that the work injury and the preexisting condition combined in some articulable fashion to produce an overall result.
{16} When, as in this case, an employer challenges whether the disability is the natural and direct result of the accident, a worker must establish a causal connection between the two to a medical probability. See § 52-1-28(B). The worker must meet this burden of persuasion by producing expert medical testimony as to causation. Id. Worker produced uncontroverted medical evidence from Dr. Dicke and Dr. DuBose about the disability resulting from the combined effect of the compression fractures and the multiple myeloma.
{17} When medical opinion on causation is uncontradicted, that evidence is conclusive on the question of the causal connection between the accident and the disability. ); . Wor
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