Firefighter benefits denied in heart dispute

State Government

Digging into the meaning of “heart disease,” a divided appeals court said Wednesday that a firefighter is not entitled to workers’ compensation insurance benefits after treatment for a type of aneurysm.

A panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 ruling, overturned a judge of compensation claims’ decision that said John Harlem, a firefighter with the North Collier Fire Control and Rescue District, was entitled to benefits.

The issue stemmed, in part, from a state law creating a legal presumption that firefighters’ disabling medical conditions were suffered in the line of duty if they were caused by heart disease.

Harlem underwent surgery in 2018 for a thoracic aortic aneurysm, a life-threatening condition, and sought workers’ compensation benefits for lost wages and medical bills, according to Wednesday’s ruling.

The dispute involved whether the aneurysm, which did not require replacement of Harlem’s aortic valve, constituted heart disease,

Judge Adam Tanenbaum wrote in the ruling joined by Judge Thomas Winokur.

The ruling went into extensive detail, including showing heart diagrams, and pointed to what it said was the understood meaning of heart disease when the presumption law passed in 1965.

“Basically, 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,” Tanenbaum wrote. “The JCC’s (judge of compensation claims’) determination that Harlem’s aortic aneurysm was ‘heart disease,’ such that the presumption contained in (the law) could apply, conflicts with what that term assuredly meant at the time the statute originally was enacted.”

But Judge Susan Kelsey dissented, saying the ruling conflicted with a 2010 precedent from the Tallahassee-based appeals court.

Kelsey wrote that the precedent is “inconsistent with the present majority’s reasoning that the inquiry is legal (for judges to make by reading dictionaries — and old ones, at that) rather than medical and that the claimant here is not entitled to the statutory presumption because his condition was arterial rather than involving the chambers of the heart itself.”