Sorry it's taken me so long to answer Hope4thebest, but this was one of those situations where although I remembered the net result properly, I ran into nothing but frustration in trying to do online statutory research in order to retrace my steps, plus my friend the WC attorney who confirmed my understanding of what SB 899 meant when it passed in 2004 has been in an ICU for the last two weeks.

The good news is as follows: (1) my friend and father of my oldest son's best friend of many years standing is going to pull through and (2) in a published decision of the full (en banc) Workers' Compensation Appeals Board that came down in February of 2009, referred to as the Almaraz-Guzman Opinion, http://www.csims.net/pdf/Almaraz%20-...0en%20banc.pdf, the court held that the presumptions created in the "Schedule for Rating Permanent Disabilities" of the California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Workers' Compensation, http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/PDR.pdf, which in turn incorporates the American Medical Association (AMA) Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, 5th Edition, are rebuttable.

Now, I know that was an impossibly long and opaque sentence, but what it boils down to is pretty simple. Back in 2004, shortly after he assumed office, Arnold threatened to violate the California Legislature unless it passed "comprehensive workers' compensation reform," and the legislature obliged with the adoption of SB (Senate Bill) 899, the business end of which appears in Labor Code Sec. 4660, embracing the "evidence-based medicine" [Gawd, what a misnomer!] of the AMA Guides. And here's where my memory betrayed me: there is no reference to either CRPS or Fibro in the statute. My recollection now refreshed, I had to have read at the time what the adoption of the AMA Guides would have meant in practice for anyone with those pain conditions. It was this understanding that my friend Ted confirmed when this was going down. (And I realize that my "false memory" was correct in one sense. Everyone knew that the statute as written was designed to relieve industry of the burden of defending against trumped up claims of chronic pain, and if that meant throwing the baby out with the bath, so be it. Claims based on RSD and Fibro would not be allowed.)

For a terrifying screed by a leading physcian regarding the effect of the AMA Guides on (now past) RSD patients, as it appears on the RSD Foundation webpage, check this out: http://www.rsdfoundation.org/test/AMA.html. I would urge everyone to read it closely.

Bottom line: for patients in California, a rebuttable presumption is better than one that's irrebuttable, but a presumption it remains. Or don't try this at home. This is indeed where people need lawyers.

Mike