Florida appellate court does a deep dive into the meaning of heart disease.
In April 2018, medical testing revealed that the claimant, a fire fighter, had a thoracic aortic aneurysm, and he underwent surgery in June 2018 to resolve same. The claimant filed a petition to request compensability of the alleged condition, lost wages and medical bills. He contended that he met the occupational causation presumption found in section 112.18 of the Florida Statutes. That provision states that a “condition or impairment of health” resulting in a disability is “presumed to be accidental, and to have been suffered in the line of duty” if the condition or impairment is “caused by tuberculosis, heart disease, or hypertension.” The claimant asserted that the aneurysm was “heart disease,” as that term is used in Section 112.18, and that his work as a fire fighter was presumed to be the cause of his need for medical treatment and the lost wages that followed. Note that the claimant did not present any evidence as to the occupational causation of the aneurysm. In its review, the First District Court of Appeals noted that there was no evidence at all regarding the causation of the aneurysm.
The judge of compensation claims found that the aneurysm fit within the meaning of “heart disease” and applied the presumption with a finding of compensability.
On appeal, the employer asserted that, because the surgery did not involve replacement of the aortic valve—which controls blood flow exiting from the ventricle into the aorta—the aneurysm was not heart disease and the presumption did not apply.
The appellate court found that the judge relied almost entirely on this court’s decision in City of Venice v. Van Dyke, 46 So. 3rd, 115 (Fla. 1st DCA 2010), where the ascending aorta was found to be one of the structures of the heart based on a diagram labeled “Structures of the heart.” The appellate court found that Van Dyke’s facts were very limited and did not find that case to be the one and only approach to defining “heart disease.”
The appellate court did a deep dive into the meaning of heart disease, going back to ancient Egypt. They ultimately concluded that it is the type of disease affecting and weakening the heart muscle through a degradation of the vessels or the valves and which was prevalent as a major cause of death in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They went on to say that the presumption contained in Section 112.18 conflicts with what that term meant at the time the statute was originally enacted. They vacated the judge’s order below.
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