Baigmoradi: A Crushing Injury Supported Psychiatric Impairment in a Total-Disability Award

After a serious work accident, problems with memory, emotions and coping can affect daily life alongside physical injuries. A disability evaluation needs to explain how those problems interact. The worker may also face a dispute about which medical reports can be considered and whether psychiatric impairment can increase the rating.

Baigmoradi v. NEP Group, Inc., No. ADJ14053925 (WCAB May 16, 2025), addressed all three questions. The panel denied the employer’s petition for reconsideration, leaving a permanent-total-disability award in place. Its reasoning connected the purpose of a neuropsychological consultation, the medical explanation of overlapping impairments and the force of the accident that caused the injuries.

A heavy screen fell on a live-video technician

The adopted judge’s report in Baigmoradi describes his work as an LED and live-video technician. After a concert, a 600- to 800-pound LED screen fell on him from a roller cage cart. The judge’s report described injuries affecting his head and multiple other body parts and systems, including psychiatric injury.

At the February 2025 trial, the parties disputed whether to admit neuropsychological reports prepared by Fernando Gonzalez, Ph.D., and whether the medical evidence supported permanent total disability. The judge admitted the reports and found Baigmoradi permanently totally disabled.

The employer challenged the reports’ admissibility, the adequacy of the medical opinions, the addition of neurological and psychiatric disability ratings and the statutory treatment of psychiatric impairment. These were separate objections requiring separate answers.

The purpose of the consultation mattered to admissibility

The employer relied on the distinction between a treatment consultation and an expert hired solely to rebut a qualified medical evaluator. The panel examined how Dr. Gonzalez had become involved rather than deciding the issue from the report’s label.

The primary treating physician, Thomas Schweller, M.D., had requested the consultation. Neuropsychological evaluation and testing had also been authorized through utilization review in 2021. Dr. Schweller later relied in part on Dr. Gonzalez’s work when addressing impairment, restrictions, causation, apportionment and future care.

Reading Valdez and Batten together, the panel concluded in Baigmoradi that this was a treatment consultation, rather than a report obtained solely to rebut a QME. It upheld admission of the reports.

For another worker, the relevant documents may include the treating physician’s referral, authorization and subsequent reports. They can explain why a consultant was engaged and how the treating physician used the findings. Admission into evidence is one question; whether the opinion adequately supports the claimed disability is another.

The doctor explained how neurological and psychiatric problems amplified one another

Permanent-disability ratings ordinarily use a Combined Values Chart when combining multiple impairments. The panel applied the framework from Vigil v. County of Kern, 89 Cal.Comp.Cases 686 (WCAB en banc 2024), as discussed in Baigmoradi: Medical evidence must explain each impairment’s effects on activities of daily living and why the relationship between them supports addition rather than the chart’s usual combination. The issue is whether those effects are separate or, if they overlap, whether the overlap increases or amplifies their impact.

Dr. Gonzalez’s supplemental report quoted in Baigmoradi addressed that relationship. He described how Baigmoradi’s emotional disturbance, cognitive problems, reactions to his environment and difficulty coping reflected interacting neurological and psychological processes. In the doctor’s view, those processes reinforced one another and produced greater impairment together.

The judge accepted that explanation, and the panel agreed that it supported addition under Vigil. The question was how the impairments affected this worker’s functioning. The medical explanation supplied the link between the diagnoses and the proposed rating method.

The judge’s report in Baigmoradi records psychiatric disability of 73 percent and an emotional-or-behavioral-disorder rating of 43 percent, added in the rating instructions. The evaluator’s calculation added 73 and 43 to an intermediate figure of 116. The evaluator recommended—and the judge awarded—100 percent permanent disability. The medical reports and rating instructions explained the basis for that total-disability award.

The mechanism of injury supported the violent-act exception

For injuries occurring on or after January 1, 2013, Labor Code section 4660.1(c) generally restricts an increased impairment rating for a psychiatric disorder arising from a compensable physical injury. It provides exceptions, including a compensable psychiatric injury resulting from being a victim of a violent act or direct exposure to a significant violent act.

The panel focused in Baigmoradi on the mechanism of the accident: An extremely heavy object fell on and crushed him. Applying the reasoning discussed in Larsen and Wilson, it found the strong, extreme or intense physical force sufficient to meet the violent-act exception.

That finding answered the employer’s statutory objection to including the psychiatric impairment. The medical evidence still had to support the impairment itself and explain the rating. The exception and the medical proof performed different roles in sustaining the award.

The award survived because the answers fit together

The panel denied reconsideration in Baigmoradi. The consultation’s treatment purpose supported admission; the reasoned medical reporting supported the disability findings and addition of impairments; and the crushing mechanism supported the psychiatric-rating exception.

For a worker with physical, cognitive and psychiatric consequences after a serious accident, this case shows why the evaluation must address more than a list of diagnoses. Counsel needs to understand how the reports were obtained, what functional effects they explain, which rating method they support and how any statutory exception applies to the actual accident.

Our analysis of Valdez explains the separate statutory role of non-network treatment reports. For help with disputed medical evidence or a disability rating, see our California workers’ compensation practice.