You tore your rotator cuff. You had surgery. The rating came back at almost nothing — and nobody is cheating you. The AMA Guides, which California ratings are built on, contain no impairment value for a rotator cuff tear at all. No entry for a labral or SLAP tear either. A worker with a documented full-thickness supraspinatus tear, surgically repaired, who recovers motion has a strict rating of zero — no matter how much pain remains or how much lifting capacity was lost.
What actually carries value in a shoulder
Because the tear itself has no entry, a shoulder rating is built from what the Guides do measure — and the difference between a careful evaluation and a rushed one is the difference between a real number and a zero:
Range of motion, measured properly. Degrees lost in each plane convert to impairment. An examiner who eyeballs motion instead of measuring it with a goniometer, or measures on a good day without noting variability, leaves value on the table that the statute intended to pay.
Strength loss, where it qualifies. The Guides permit strength-deficit rating in defined circumstances; whether the examiner considered it should be visible in the report.
The surgery itself, and distal consequences. What was resected, what hardware remains, and what the shoulder no longer does at work.
How to read the report your rating came from — including the one paragraph that decides more of your case than any other.
The honest part
This is a real limitation of the rating system, not a trick being played on you — and any page that promises your torn rotator cuff is automatically worth a large figure is selling something. What is checkable: whether motion was measured or estimated, whether strength was considered, whether every affected plane made it into the report, and whether the rating string was computed correctly from what the doctor actually wrote. Decode the string. · Shoulder injuries, in full.
Sources
AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (5th ed.), upper-extremity chapter, as applied by the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule — discussed in full on the shoulder page.
General information about California law, not legal advice about your case.
Impairment values described are from the AMA Guides, 5th Edition as applied under the California rating schedule; the Guides are a copyrighted medical text and figures here are summarized rather than reproduced. Your rating depends on your own examination findings.
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