Workers’ Compensation – Worker sustains back injuries following fall, seeks PTD

$1.05 million settlement

Injuries alleged: Lumber disc herniation, spinal cord stimulator implantation

Court: Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission

Name of judge: Deputy Commissioner D. Edward Wise

Date resolved: Dec. 4, 2025

Special damages: The claimant had received $358,771.61 in weekly wage loss payments and $464,131.62 in medical care and medications prior to settlement.

Amount: $1.05 million

Attorney for plaintiff: Doug Landau, Herndon, Abrams Landau

Plaintiff’s experts: Dr. B. Lee, physical medicine and rehabilitation; Dr. John Bruno, orthopedics

Case description: A worker fell and injured her lumbar spine, coccyx and sacrum in August 2015. After two unsuccessful L5-S1 microdiscectomy procedures, a spinal cord stimulator (SCS) was implanted in her back, and she later underwent a revision of the SCS. She exhausted her 500 weeks of indemnity, the maximum for workers’ comp cases in Virginia, except in certain limited circumstances.

The plaintiff’s counsel filed for permanent total disability benefits (PTD) to get comp payments beyond the 500-week limit for the 36-year-old plaintiff. The application was supported by a trio of physicians: her authorized treating PM&R physician, Dr. B. Lee, who could not give ratings because of his specialty, but who agreed with the orthopedic specialist Dr. John Bruno’s numbers (36% permanent partial disability to the left leg and 32% to the right leg), as well as her long-time primary care physician. With permanency to both legs and the inability to use her lower extremities in employment, counsel argued that the injured worker met the requisite standard for PTD benefits — lifetime indemnity with cost of living adjustments.

The last defense medical examination refuted those findings and indicated the claimant needed little in the way of further medical care, that there was a dearth of objective findings and that she could work.