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Elisha Harden claimed injury to her cervical spine, lumbar spine and psyche on November 14, 2012 while employed as a probation assistant by the County of Sacramento.

The parties agreed to use Peter Mandell, M.D., as the orthopedic AME. Dr. Mandell evaluated applicant and issued reports addressing her industrial injury.

Joseph McCoy, M.D., evaluated applicant in 2016 as an orthopedic independent medical examiner (IME) in relation to her application for disability retirement. Richard Lieberman, M.D., evaluated applicant in 2016 as a psychiatric IME also for her claim for disability retirement. As part of Dr. Lieberman’s examination, applicant was given psychological testing, which was independently scored by psychologist Bernard Bauer. All reports were addressed to the Sacramento County Employees Retirement System.

On April 24, 2019, defendant served applicant with a copy of the reports of Dr. McCoy, Dr. Lieberman and Dr. Bauer. Defendant’s cover letter with these enclosures stated: “We will be providing these medical reports to QME Dr. Wantuch and AME Dr. Mandell in 20 days absent a timely objection from your office.”

On May 8, 2019, applicant sent a response to defendant’s letter objecting to providing these reports to the AME.

The sole issue at the trial held on July 10, 2019 was “Whether the reports of Dr. Joseph McCoy, Dr. Richard Lieberman, and Dr. Bernard Bauer obtained in the disability retirement proceeding shall be provided to the QME Dr. Elizabeth Wantuch and Dr. Peter Mandell over Applicant’s objection.

These reports were ordered inadmissible and defendant was ordered not to provide the reports to Dr. Wantuch and Dr. Mandell. Reconsideration was granted in the case of Harden v County of Sacramento.The WCJ order was rescinded, and the reports of Dr. McCoy, Dr. Lieberman and Dr. Bauer may be provided to the orthopedic AME Dr. Mandell and the psychiatric QME. The panel also ordered applicant’s objection to provision of these reports to the medical-legal evaluators to be overruled.

“In determining whether to admit evidence, we are governed by the principles of section 5708, which states that the Appeals Board “shall not be bound by the common law or statutory rules of evidence and procedure, but may make inquiry in the manner, through oral testimony and records, which is best calculated to ascertain the substantial rights of the parties and carry out justly the spirit and provisions of this division.” (Lab. Code, § 5708.) The right to present evi,dence implicates the right to due process. (Hegg/in v, Workmen’s Comp. Appeals Bd. (1971) 4 Cal.3d 162, 175 [36 Cal.Comp.Cases 93]; Pence v, Industrial Acci. Com. (1965) 63 Cal.2d 48, 51 [30 Cal.Comp.Cases 207].)”

Commissioner Razo dissented. “The parties may not circumvent the requirements of section 4062.2 in order to admit into evidence medical reporting that was not prepared in compliance with the Labor Code. Defendant cannot backdoor into the record evidence that implicitly addresses applicant’s level of permanent impairment and limitations from her industrial injury, and is therefore inadmissible under section 406l(i). (See Batten v. Workers ‘ Comp. Appeals Bd (2015) 241 Cal.App.4th 1009, 1014 [80 Cal.Comp.Cases 1256].) The majority view allows parties to circumvent the legislative intent to disallow privately retained medical experts.

The current workers’ compensation system in California is designed to provide two separate and structured medical evaluation paths to obtaining medical-legal evaluations. For medical treatment disputes, the Legislature created the utilization review (UR) process and independent medical review (IMR). For other disputes regarding AOE/COE, injury, causation, disability, etc., the Legislature enacted the agreed medical evaluator (AME) and the panel qualified medical evaluator (QME) selection process to enable parties to obtain medical-legal evaluations on these issues.

The legislative intent is to avoid “doctor shopping” and to keep litigation costs down. To allow the parties in this case to deviate from the procedures outlined in sections 4062-4062.2 opens the door to enable other types of medical- legal reports to be admissible outside of the legislative mandated process.”