Ruddell: A Later Knee-Injury Report Did Not Establish Knowledge of an Earlier Baseball Injury

An old workers’ compensation claim can complicate a new one involving the same knees. But knowing that a later accident injured your knees is different from knowing that years of earlier work also caused a cumulative injury. That distinction mattered in Ruddell. A Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board panel replaced the earlier judge’s January 2015 injury date with July 16, 2020 and found the former baseball player’s claim timely. The ruling resolved the limitations issue that had been separated for trial.

Two jobs produced two different medical questions

Michael Ruddell claimed cumulative injuries from professional baseball employment with the Cincinnati Reds between June 5, 1969 and May 30, 1975. He filed his application on September 19, 2019. Years after baseball, he had worked as a supervisor for Valero Energy Corporation and injured both knees in a September 10, 2008 ladder accident. He later settled that knee claim for $150,000 through a compromise and release.

In the later-job claim, Dr. Lawrence Barnett described pre-existing knee arthritis that worsened after the ladder incident and resulted in permanent disability. His reports were served on Ruddell on January 8, 2015. The workers’ compensation judge treated that service date as the date Ruddell knew about his earlier cumulative injury and found the 2019 application too late. The Ruddell decision describes the medical reports and the judge’s conclusion.

The statutory date joins disability with knowledge of its work connection

For cumulative injury, Labor Code section 5412 identifies the point when the employee first suffered disability and knew, or reasonably should have known, that the disability was caused by present or prior employment. Both parts matter. Section 5405 generally measures the time to begin proceedings from one of three alternatives: The date of injury, the end of a period covered by disability-benefit payments, or the last furnishing of covered medical benefits. The panel set out those alternatives in Ruddell.

The panel distinguished this statutory injury date from the underlying question whether work actually caused an injury. Disability is ordinarily a medical question. Knowledge also calls for more than an uninformed belief. Applying City of Fresno v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (Johnson), 163 Cal.App.3d 467, 473 (1985), the panel explained that medical advice is generally needed unless the nature of the disability and the employee’s circumstances make the work connection reasonably recognizable. Ruddell applied that qualified rule to the actual reports and testimony.

The older report addressed the ladder fall, not the baseball connection

Dr. Barnett’s report supported disability from the 2008 knee injury. The panel found the evidence insufficient to charge Ruddell with knowledge of the baseball-related cumulative injury simply because those reports had been served. The report’s subject and explanation mattered, not just its age or its reference to pre-existing arthritis.

Ruddell testified that neither the people handling the later knee claim nor the physicians treating him had told him his injuries related to professional baseball. A classmate told him in 2019 that he could file a claim arising from his baseball work, and he retained an attorney. He testified that he first learned of the cumulative injury at Dr. Michael Einbund’s July 16, 2020 evaluation. The panel considered that testimony alongside the actual medical explanation. Ruddell recounts the testimony.

The new evaluation connected disability to the earlier work

Dr. Einbund described the repeated physical demands of professional baseball and related Ruddell’s symptoms and disability to that work. The opinion also recounted other evaluations addressing orthopedic, emotional and internal conditions. The panel required medical reasoning grounded in pertinent facts, an adequate examination and history, and reasonable medical probability. It relied on the substantial-evidence principles discussed in Escobedo v. Marshalls, 70 Cal.Comp.Cases 604, 620–621 (WCAB en banc 2005).

On this evidence, the panel found July 16, 2020 to be the section 5412 date. Because Ruddell had already filed his application in September 2019, section 5405 did not bar it. The panel amended those findings and otherwise affirmed the earlier decision. All other issues had been separated from the limitations trial, so the operative relief was a timely claim proceeding past that barrier. The reasoning and order appear in Ruddell.

For a worker with injuries spanning different jobs, the useful comparison is what each doctor attributed to which work—and what the worker was told. Our guide to later-accident reports and earlier-job claims explains how to bring those records together for advice. A new report should be evaluated promptly; the date of a preferred later opinion is not a safe deadline to choose on your own.