Former Everett bus driver settles injury claim with city for $70K

EVERETT — A former Everett Transit bus driver settled his workplace injury claim after 13 years and repeated attempts to reopen it with the city.

The Everett City Council approved a $70,000settlement Wednesday with Robin Wilcox, who drove a bus for the city for over a decade. The agreement does not admit liability by the city, and Wilcox gives up his ability to appeal.

The city agreed to the deal as the less-costly option and to protect Everett from future claims, according to the staff brief presented to the council.

They will pay their own legal fees.

Wilcox, who started driving buses for Everett in 1998, twisted his right knee while walking up the bus steps April 29, 2009, according to documents from the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals.

The state Department of Labor and Industries allowed his self-insured claim. But a final order for the city to accept responsibility was never issued, and the claim was closed without an award for permanent disability May 5, 2010.

Over the next eight years, his claim would be reopened and closed two more times.

L&I reopened the claim again May 1, 2018. Everett appealed and argued the knee injury was not “objectively worsened or became aggravated” between Aug. 7, 2015 and May 1, 2018.

That shifted the burden of persuasion to Wilcox, who had to prove the injury caused the worsened condition and prove the condition got worse by comparing objective medical findings.

Two orthopedic surgeons evaluated and Wilcox testified he had preexisting and symptomatic degenerative problems in his knees, according to the documents. The surgeons reviewed diagnostic images of Wilcox’s knee from 2007, before the injury in 2009, that showed cartilage in his right knee was damaged “to the point that his femur and tibia were bone-on-bone.”

Wilcox’s orthopedic surgeon testified the 2009 injury “lit up” his existing osteoarthritis. But that opinion was outweighed by the other surgeons’ testimony, Industrial Insurance Appeals Judge Lance Palmer wrote in an order issued July 5, 2019.

Palmer determined the decision to reopen Wilcox’s claim was incorrect, and reversed the department’s decision and remanded it to L&I.

Ben Watanabe: 425-339-3037; bwatanabe@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @benwatanabe.