Virginia: Even With Firefighter’s Presumption, Claimant Fails to Show Causal Connection Between Employment and Prostate Cancer

In addition to its special statutory presumptions of compensability favoring firefighters and police officers claiming respiratory and heart diseases connected with the exertions of their employment, Virginia adds a separate presumption favoring that same group of public servants who contract cancer [Va. Code Ann. § 65.2–402(C)]. Construing that statute, a state appellate court held that it is not enough for a claimant to show that he or she was exposed to a carcinogen and then developed a particular cancer. Rather, the claimant must show that he or she was exposed to carcinogen(s) and that such carcinogens caused or are suspected of causing the particular type of cancer from which the claimant suffers. Here, claimant had worked as a firefighter for many years prior to a diagnosis that he suffered from prostate cancer. After his prostate surgery, he required 37 weeks of radiation therapy. He sought workers’ compensation benefits, contending he had contracted an occupational disease. The appellate court found that the Commission had properly interpreted the statute to require an employee to show that he had been exposed to a known or suspected carcinogen and that the known or suspected carcinogen caused or was suspected to cause a particular type of cancer listed in § 65.2–402(C). The court noted that although claimant’s physician had opined that the claimant’s exposure to certain substances at work could have been possible risk factors in the development of his prostate cancer, a “possible risk factor” was not synonymous to the “cause” or “suspected to cause” language in § 65.2–402(C).

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Whiting v. City of Charlottesville Fire and Police, 2015 Va. App. LEXIS 243 (Aug. 11, 2015) [2015 Va. App. LEXIS 243 (Aug. 11, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 52.07 [52.07]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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