"I have more than one injury."

The three combinations

Two specific injuries — two events, two dates, two claims. Potentially different employers, different carriers, different policy years.

A specific injury plus a cumulative trauma — very common, and frequently under-claimed because the cumulative claim is invisible. Under § 5412 its date of injury is when you first suffered disability and knew it was work-related. How.

One injury with a compensable consequence — the other side, the joint above or below, a surgical complication, CRPS. That is part of the original claim, not a new one. More.

Why the characterization matters

Who pays. Different employers and carriers may be on different claims.

Which deadlines apply. Each claim has its own.

And how the ratings combine. Multiple impairments are combined using the Combined Values Chart, not simply added — which is why two 30% impairments do not make 60%.

The combining question is genuinely contested at the margins, and Vigil v. County of Kern (2024, WCAB en banc) addressed it. How multiple impairments are combined can materially change the final percentage. How ratings are built.

What the defense will do

Argue that the disability belongs to the other claim — whichever one they are not defending.

Two rules constrain that:

§ 4664(b) conclusively presumes a prior award of permanent disability still exists — but that requires an actual award, not a Compromise and Release without one.

And note Lindh cuts the other way — it permits apportionment to a condition that never disabled anyone. The defense still has to prove, with substantial medical evidence, that the earlier injury causes part of this disability. How.

And the one that adds money

If one of the disabilities is pre-existing, SIBTF may apply — a state fund that pays where a pre-existing disability plus an industrial injury produce a substantially greater combined disability.

It is paid by a fund, not by your employer — genuinely additional money — and it is chronically under-claimed. SB 171 rewrote it effective July 2026, retroactively, with a June 1, 2026 grandfather snapshot. What changed.