Hicks v. SAIF Corp.

Claimant seeks review of an order of the Workers’ Compensation Board rejecting a medical arbiter’s rating of his impairment and substituting an impairment rating resulting in a reduction in claimant’s disability award from 36 percent unscheduled permanent partial disability to 18 percent permanent partial disability. We conclude that the board erred in rejecting the medical arbiter’s rating of claimant’s impairment and reverse.

The facts are undisputed. Claimant injured his neck at work in September 2000, when he fell from a ladder. Diagnostic testing revealed that claimant suffered from a…