Circuit Court Gives a Big Thumbs Down to Petitioner’s Alleged Overcompensation Thumb Injury

In psychology, overcompensation happens when someone exaggerates a reaction in order to achieve a certain goal. For example, in one experiment, participants were told to putt a golf ball short. With the nagging sense of potential failure at the helm, participants landed the putt significantly longer than at baseline.  A person who feels guilty about mistreating a friend may start to act overly friendly or complimentary to fill the void of their own sub-par behavior. The intention of the over-compensator is to gain trust; to try to erase bad actions, guilty feelings, or feelings of inferiority.  Trust, after all, lies at the core of every strong relationship.

Unfortunately for the over-compensator, efforts at overcompensation have been found to fail miserably, leaving a lightly dusted trail of mistrust for the recipient.  Studies have shown that overcompensation doesn’t lead to any enhanced trust perceptions, and will likely backfire, leading to a further deterioration of basic trust.

Overcompensation hasn’t gained much respect in Illinois Workers’ Compensation either, and for good reason.  Theoretically, overcompensation in the workplace occurs when – due to the breakdown of one part of the body – another part of the body overcompensates and then breaks down too.

 In Abramson v. Presence Resurrection Hospital, the Commission and Circuit Court weighed in on this very issue, and justice ended up prevailing.  Petitioner, a former nurse, sustained a compensable right thumb injury when assisting a patient in bed.  After the injury, petitioner was assigned to light duty work restricting use of her right hand.  Petitioner alleged at trial that her left thumb condition – for which she underwent four surgeries – was due to overuse in the light duty position.  Petitioner did not have a medical opinion to support her theory. Petitioner also had an undisputed preexisting condition in her bilateral thumbs.

The Arbitrator denied benefits, concluding that in repetitive trauma claims involving a preexisting condition, petitioner must rely upon a medical opinion in order to support compensability.  The only medical expert opinion in evidence was that of Respondent’s IME, who concluded that petitioner’s condition was not (in any way, shape or form) related to overcompensation.

The Commission unanimously reversed the Arbitrator’s decision regarding the left thumb.  In doing so, the Commission rejected the only medical expert opinion in evidence, and concluded that “…the record supports a finding that Petitioner’s right hand and thumb injury caused her to compensate for the right hand injury and overuse her left hand.”  The Commission argued that it has “routinely found compensable overuse injuries to the contralateral extremity where an individual injures one extremity and during treatment through overuse in favoring that injured member, suffers a deteriorating condition on the contralateral side.”

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the case was the fact that the Commission cited to overuse cases that supported Respondent’s defense.  All of the cases the Commission cited to involved cases where petitioner either relied upon medical expert opinion to support compensability or where the overuse theory was specifically rejected.  In one of the cited decisions, the Commission had actually reversed the Arbitrator’s decision and rejected the overuse theory, awarding nothing for the contralateral extremity.

Pursuant to the Commission decision in Abramson, the employer was ordered to pay a whopping 94 and 1/7 weeks of TTD, approximately 40 additional weeks of PPD for the left hand, and payment for a significant amount of medical expenses for all of petitioner’s surgeries for the left thumb – the extremity that didn’t get injured on the date of accident.

Should an employer be liable for an injury in body part B, C and D when only body part A was affected in the work injury?  On a basic level, this seems totally unfair to employers. Employers should be incentivized to take their people back to work safely.  Instead, the employee’s fragility in a light duty position should not be overexaggerated so that the risk of re-injury is too high of a cost for employers to bear.  Additionally, where is the line drawn?  What if the employee alleges that they overused their ankle in a lumbar spine case? If the need for medical expert opinion is removed, the sky is the limit for the employee, and the employer can be liable for every condition under the sun.

In Abramson, the Respondent appealed the decision of the Commission, and the Circuit Court concluded (with regard to the left hand/thumb) that the Commission decision was indeed against the manifest weight of the evidence.  The Circuit Court Judge outlined the wide body of case law that stands for the proposition that medical expert testimony is needed in repetitive trauma claims involving a preexisting condition.  Although the Appellate Court in University of Illinois v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission (2021 Ill. App. 4^th, 210236WC-U) was exactly on point in this case, (but unpublished), the University of Illinois only expounded on law that was already well-entrenched on the issue (See Berry v. Industrial Commission, 99 Ill. 2d 401, 1984, Johnson v. Industrial Commission, 89 Ill. 2d 438, 1982, Nunn v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, 157 Ill. App. 3d) The Circuit Court pointed out that apart from petitioner’s testimony, there was no evidence whatsoever that supported the overcompensation theory.

Our well-established case law makes sense.  In a claim premised upon repetitive trauma/overcompensation where the claimant has a preexisting condition, the lines of correlation and causation are blurred.  If a preexisting condition is severe, the claimant will have symptoms at work and outside of work, and extra caution must be taken in assigning causation. Well-credentialed physicians, not lawyers, are the best individual to weigh the medical evidence and weigh in on causation, and the Commission should defer to the experts when experts have weighed in.

I believe that the Commission overcompensated for the petitioner in this case.  Unfortunately, the result for the employer was a sense of unfairness of our entire system, and heavy expenditures/costs all the way to the grueling (but victorious) finish line.

The Circuit Court decision was not appealed, and has now become the law of the case.  I am grateful both for our review process and a client who felt the sting of injustice enough to pursue an appeal.  If you have any questions about this case, repetitive trauma, or overcompensation, feel free to reach out to our attorneys here.

The NBKL blog is provided for informational purposes; we are not giving legal advice or creating an attorney/client relationship by providing this information.  Before relying on any legal information of a general nature, you may consider consulting legal counsel as to your particular facts and applications of the law.