If an employee has a prior 25% permanent disability and later sustains a second injury affecting the other eye, how should you reserve for the second injury?

• A. 25%
• B. 100%
• C. 100% less 25%
• D. Notify the excess carrier.

Answer: (C)

When reserving for a second injury, you allocate the amount of permanent disability that is attributable to the new injury after accounting for any preexisting impairment. The total disability cannot exceed 100%, so you subtract the existing impairment from the potential total caused by the new injury.

Here, the employee already has 25% permanent disability. If the second injury to the other eye could bring the total to 100% disability, the incremental portion due to the second injury is 100% minus 25%, which equals 75%. So you reserve 75% for the second injury.

This approach avoids double-counting the impairment you already have and ensures the total PD doesn’t exceed 100%. The other options don’t reflect this incremental method: reserving only 25% omits part of the new impairment; reserving 100% ignores the preexisting disability; and notifying the excess carrier is an administrative step, not the reserve amount.