The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania overturned an award of workers compensation benefits to a volunteer firefighter who suffered from stomach cancer, finding that the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board failed in its determination that the man filed his claim in timely fashion per state law, according to a June ruling made public Friday.

East Hempfield Township v. Workers Compensation Appeal Board concerns a volunteer firefighter diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2006, four years into his job with East Hempfield Township. He had been working as a firefighter since 1974, according to records filed in court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

In November 2014, the man, who retired in 2009 after treatment that included surgery, filed a workers compensation claim, “alleging that he sustained stomach cancer due to exposure to carcinogens during his tenure as a volunteer firefighter for” the township, seeking payment of medical bills and full disability benefits from April 1 to June 1, 2006. 

He testified that “as early as 2006 or 2007” he suspected there might be a connection between his firefighting and his stomach cancer. In 2011, he read an article regarding Pennsylvania’s passage of a presumption law that addressed cancer in firefighters and how it may affect their rights under the state workers comp laws, according to documents.

“After reading this article, Claimant again suspected a connection between his service as a firefighter and his cancer diagnosis. Thereafter, Claimant sought the services of an attorney to discuss his workers compensation rights, and Claimant entered into a fee agreement with counsel” in August 2012,” records state.

He further testified that in September 2014, two months before filing his claim, a doctor confirmed the link between the stomach cancer and his service as a firefighter, according to documents.

In August 2015, the Workers’ Compensation Judge granted his claim petition. The employer later appealed to the state Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board. In July 2016, the Board opined that “the WCJ erred in applying an inapplicable presumption to Claimant’s claim and remanded the matter to the WCJ to render a determination without applying the presumption.”

On remand, the WCJ again granted Claimant’s claim.

The township then appealed this decision to the board, alleging that some of the “WCJ’s factual findings were unsupported by substantial evidence and that the WCJ made multiple errors of law. Among Employer’s challenges, it argued that the WCJ erred in concluding that Claimant provided sufficient notice to Employer of his cancer within 120 days” as law requires, according to court documents.

The board “noted that the WCJ found that the notice period did not begin to run until Claimant received a copy of (a doctor’s) report on September 16, 2014, informing him of the causal link between his cancer and firefighting,” records state.

On appeal, the employer argued “that the Board erred by failing to analyze whether Claimant exercised reasonable diligence to discover the origins of his cancer,” records state.

In a ruling made June 1, the three-judge panel kicked the decision back to the Workers’ Compensation Judge with the instructions to answer the “critical inquiry” whether the volunteer firefighter “made a reasonable effort to discover the cause of his injury under the facts and circumstances present in the case,” stating that the board erred in its citing of previous court cases that did not apply, according to court documents.