Albertson's, Inc. v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board

Opinion

BLEASE, J.

We granted a writ of review in this case to consider whether an employee’s claim of a cumulative injury (Lab. Code, § 3208.1) to her psyche may be founded upon an honest misperception of job harassment which interacts with a preexisting psychiatric condition so as to cause job stress. We conclude that it may, but agree with the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (board), which declines to compensate spurious claims of industrial causation (the product of “after the fact rationalization”) or claims in which “the employment was a mere passive element that a nonindustrial…