Rubio, Alberto

Alberto Rubio, a longtime General Motors warehouseman, sustained an admitted cumulative trauma injury to numerous body parts including the psyche and a sleep disorder, established by a now-final Amended Joint Findings and Award of May 19, 2023. After his death from acute cardiopulmonary arrest on March 3, 2020, the WCJ awarded $250,000 in death benefits plus burial expenses to his totally dependent widow, finding that industrial anxiety and depression were a contributing cause of his death. Defendant sought reconsideration, arguing no substantial medical evidence supported industrial causation of death, that res judicata/collateral estoppel barred the claim, and that the reports were improperly obtained under Labor Code section 4605. The WCAB denied reconsideration, adopting the WCJ's Report, holding that the opinions of Dr. Pietruszka and Dr. Lamm constituted substantial evidence and that under South Coast Framing only a contributing industrial cause is required. The Board emphasized that the unrebutted medical evidence linked the previously awarded industrial psyche injury and sleep disorder to the fatal cardiopulmonary arrest.