We almost never refer our Spartanburg personal injury and workers compensation clients to doctors because it can kill your case, but this case was the rare one where doing so was necessary and beneficial. The reason for the independent medical exam (IME) was the surgeon selected by the employer gave our client the same impairment rating after two operations to the same knee.
Our client got hurt when he slipped on wax while exiting a car he was working on at the BMW plant in Greer just outside Spartanburg, severely twisting his left knee. Eventually, the surgeon selected by the employer operated, performing an arthroscopy with partial medial meniscectomy and excision of superomedial plica/synovial shelf. The surgeon assigned a 5% permanent impairment rating to his left leg.
Our client continued to have bad problems in the knee, so about a month later, the surgeon performed another partial medial meniscectomy. Despite more problems and a second operation, he assigned the same impairment rating of 5%.
Because that didn’t seem right, Rob made the unusual decision to send our client to an IME by a different local surgeon. He assigned a 15% rating, much closer to our client’s limitations.
We settled the claim for a clincher of $40,348.05, representing a 30% worker's compensation disability to the left leg.
