“The QME got it wrong.”

First: read it for the specific defects

Not “I disagree.” Specific defects. These are what actually move a report.

A wrong history. The report says you fell in March; it was January. It says you had prior back treatment; you did not. Factual errors in the history undermine everything built on them, and they are the easiest thing to prove.

Body parts missing. If you reported four and the report addresses two, that is not a disagreement — that is an incomplete report.

ApportionmentApportionment Dividing permanent disability between industrial and non-industrial causes. It is to disability, not to findings on an image. stated without reasoning. Under EscobedoEscobedo The en banc decision requiring an apportionment opinion to explain how and why. A percentage without reasoning is not substantial evidence., an opinion that names a pre-existing condition and attaches a percentage without explaining how and why is not substantial evidence. A great many apportionment opinions are exactly that, and they do not survive when challenged properly. What makes one hold up.

Records the evaluator never got. If key records were not provided, the opinion was formed without them, and that is fixable.

A rating that ignores what the Guides actually require. Measurements omitted, the wrong method applied, an objective finding not documented. How to read the report.

The four routes

1. Ask for a supplemental report. The cheapest and most common. A letter to the evaluator identifying the factual error, providing the missing records, or asking them to address a body part or explain their apportionment. This resolves more disputes than everything else combined.

2. Depose the evaluator. And note Labor Code § 5710(b)(4) — that section is about your deposition, not the evaluator’s: where you are represented and the employer takes your deposition, the employer pays your attorney’s fee for it. The rules on who bears the cost of deposing an evaluator are their own subject, but the deposition is a real tool and it is underused.

3. Rebut the rating. Almaraz/GuzmanAlmaraz/Guzman The doctrine permitting a physician to depart from the strict AMA rating where it does not accurately reflect the impairment, using another method inside the “four corners” of the Guides. where the strict AMA number does not describe your actual impairment. Ogilvie/Dahl on the diminished-future-earning-capacity route. What Almaraz/Guzman does.

4. Argue it is not substantial evidence at trial. A report that a judge cannot rely on does not decide anything, whatever it says.