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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   836 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 24, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • A person has been employed as a firefighter by a municipal government since year 2001, and also was a volunteer firefighter before 2001. First in 2018, and again in 2021, he is called upon to perform CPR on a baby, but the baby dies anyway. As a result of these two events, he develops PTSD, quits, and files for workers' compensation.

  • The municipal government does not dispute that the two baby deaths led directly to the firefighter's PTSD. However, it does dispute the firefighter's claim that baby deaths constitute "abnormal working conditions" that give rise to a valid workers' compensation claim, rather than being merely part and parcel of working as a firefighter.

  • The workers' compensation board finds that the baby deaths in question are not "abnormal working conditions" for a firefighter, so the plaintiff is not entitled to workers' compensation. The trial judge affirms. But the appeals panel reverses.

    We agree [with the municipal government's expert (Claimant's boss, a firefighter with 36 years of experience)] that, standing on its own, performing CPR on an individual, witnessing death, or responding to an emergency involving a child might each be an unfortunate but expected working condition for a firefighter. However, we must consider the specific factual scenario faced by Claimant, and we do not do so by looking to "unrelated component parts, where each part, standing on its own, might be safely determined to be a 'normal' working condition". Such a review would render our discussion a "potentiality with no relation to what happened in this case".

    The reality of Claimant's situation was that he performed CPR on, and witnessed the deaths of, two infant children within a 16-month period. It was the compounded effect of these two incidents that caused Claimant's disabling PTSD. There can be little doubt that firefighters experience a high amount of stress in their jobs. Nonetheless, we must recognize that certain events, even in high-stress professions, may rise to the level of abnormal working conditions. Claimant did not simply witness death at a usual call involving a fire or a motor-vehicle crash. Claimant was actively involved in attempting to resuscitate two separate unresponsive babies and witnessing each of their deaths. We cannot agree that Claimant's experience in this regard was a "normal" or "expected" consequence of being a firefighter. Indeed, in Claimant's 20 years' experience in firefighting service before the first event, Claimant had never before had to perform CPR on an infant. There is no evidence in the record that suggests firefighters in [this municipality] or even in [this state] routinely or normally perform CPR on infant children or witness the deaths of infant children. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that, of the three instances in which Employer called upon the county's Critical Incident Stress Decreasement Team between 2018 and 2022, two of those calls were in response to these two incidents involving Claimant and the infants. Certainly, this highlights both the rarity of these events and the potential for substantial psychological impact to the participants, which is further magnified by the fact that the same person, Claimant, administered CPR on infants on each occasion.

Series of court opinions:

  • On a road with one lane in each direction, a posted speed limit of 55 mi/h (90 km/h), an "extremely wide" shoulder, and heavy motor-vehicle traffic, a bicyclist decides to ride at 15 mi/h (25 km/h) in the middle of the lane. A police officer gives him a ticket for obstructing traffic. At trial, the bicyclist boldly asserts that he had "no legal obligation" to avoid obstructing traffic, and claims that the shoulder was unsafe. The trial judge disagrees, finds him guilty, and imposes a fine of 25 dollars. The appeals panel affirms.

  • The state supreme court vacates and remands. The lower courts have been using a standard under which a bicyclist who is obstructing motor traffic always is required to get out of the way. However, when compared with the statute, which requires that bicyclists "use reasonable efforts so as not to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic", this standard is overly rigid. Instead, whether it is reasonable for a bicyclist to temporarily move to the shoulder (rather than, e. g., merely moving to the right edge of the lane) is fact-specific and must be determined on a case-by-case basis. But a bicyclist does have a duty to make a "serious, fair attempt" to avoid obstructing motor-vehicle traffic. (Two of the seven justices dissent. They think that the majority's new standard is too vague to give to bicyclists reasonable notice of what specific activity is lawbreaking, so in practice bicyclists will move to the shoulder in all circumstances, just as under the previous standard, due to fear of prosecution.)

  • On remand, the appeals panel affirms again. The police officer's dashcam video clearly shows: (1) the shoulder was perfectly safe; and (2) the bicyclist did not even once look backward at the cars whose passage he was obstructing, from which behavior the panel can infer that the bicyclist had no interest in making the "reasonable efforts" or "serious, fair attempt" to avoid obstruction that the law requires.

I'm surprised that "abnormality" is a prerequisite for getting worker's compensation. Accepting for the sake of argument that PTSD is real, this is a real instance of PTSD, and it really prevents him from continuing in the same line of work, should "all firefighters experience this, and usually it does not result in them quitting with PTSD" be a sufficient argument to deny compensation? Does that mean that in cases like those radioactive watch face painters, where everyone in a line of work was exposed to a perhaps underappreciated probabilistic risk by convention, those who did get struck by it (the people who got cancer) have no claim to compensation?

Should "all firefighters experience this, and usually it does not result in their quitting with PTSD" be a sufficient argument to deny compensation?

According to the state supreme court:

Abandoning the distinction between normal and abnormal working conditions would eliminate the element of causation. It would destroy the fundamental principle underlying the scheme of the Workers' Compensation Act—that, in order to be compensable, an injury must be work-related. Otherwise, a claimant would have to establish only that the employee suffered from a mental illness while employed and that the illness was a condition created or aggravated by that employee's perception of the conditions of his employment. That would reduce workers' compensation benefits to nothing more than a disability or death benefit payable only because of the employee status of the claimant—and not because the injury was caused by his employment.

There is a degree of uncertainty inherent in any employment situation, as in life itself, such that an employee’s individual, subjective reaction to ordinary vicissitudes is not the type of condition which the legislature intended to require compensation for because it is not, in the common understanding, an injury.

Does that mean that, in cases like those radioactive watch face painters, where everyone in a line of work was exposed to a perhaps underappreciated probabilistic risk by convention, those who did get struck by it (the people who got cancer) have no claim to compensation?

This standard is applicable only to psychological injuries, not to physical injuries.

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