Firefighter’s additional pain not compensable
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A volunteer firefighter who suffered “severe” multiple injuries when a branch fell on him as he was cutting down a tree to gain access to a fire cannot add additional pain to his four-year-old workers compensation claim, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia ruled Thursday.
Daniel West fractured several bones in his body and had been undergoing care since his 2016 injury, according to documents in Poca Community Volunteer Fire Department v. Daniel West, filed in Charleston, West Virginia.
As a result of his injury he developed a long list of additional conditions, some of which an independent medical examiner opined were not connected to the compensable injury and were argued before the state Board of Review, a decision the recent ruling affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part.
In addition to accepting a diagnosis of insomnia as the result of pain, Thursday’s ruling stated that “evidence also shows that Mr. West developed a right knee contusion, a right wrist sprain, a lumbar disc herniation, radiculopathy, and right-sided sciatica as a result of his compensable injury.”
“However, while Mr. West may suffer from lumbago and left ankle pain, pain is a symptom, not a diagnosis. This Court has repeatedly held that symptoms, while they may be related to a compensable injury, are not diagnoses and therefore cannot be added to a claim. Therefore, left ankle pain and lumbago should not be added to the claim,” the ruling states.
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