Waler v. State Accident Insurance Fund

This is an appeal by the insurer from a workers’ compensation award for permanent total disability. The insurer argues that the award should be reduced to permanent partial disability.

The claimant was a custodian at Oregon State University. She suffers from degenerative spondylolisthesis caused by a number of injuries on the job. Her impairment is not complete, but the Board found her to be totally unemployable due to her lack of amenability to retraining.

Where, as here, a claimant is not completely incapacitated and yet seeks to be found totally unemployable, she must show that this is…