TALLAHASSEE — A three-judge panel reversed a final compensation order from an accident that occurred 18 years ago.
"On the 2002 claim, we reverse and remand the compensability decision because undisputed medical evidence appears to overcome the application of the presumption in §112.18(1)(a), Florida Statutes, as to what triggered Claimant’s intermittent atrial fibrillation episodes," Judge Timothy Osterhaus wrote in the decision.
Osterhaus authored the April 23 decision. Judges Susan Kelsey and Rachel Nordby concurred.
In 2002, Adrian O'Neal was a 29-year-old corrections officer who began to experience heart problems when he would exercise, causing lightheadedness. O'Neal was training for a competition similar to the Olympics in track and flag football when he began to have the issues and he sought medical care, where he was diagnosed with atrial tachycardia and atrial fibrillation.
O'Neal filed a workers' compensation claim on June 26, 2002, which the Judge of Compensation Claims (JCC) determined in 2016 was compensable due to job-related stress.
The court found that when O'Neal underwent a cardiac procedure on June 26, 2002, in which his physician purposefully stressed his heart to induce arrhythmias like the ones he had been experiencing when working out, the issue was non-work-related and not job stress triggering the condition.
"Because the medical evidence shows that Claimant’s peak exercise workouts in 2002 triggered the degeneration of his congenital heart condition into atrial fibrillation, and this evidence wasn’t evaluated as a non-occupational cause that would overcome § 112.18(1)(a)’s presumption, we reverse and remand for further consideration," Osterhaus wrote.
A physician testified before the JCC that while job stress could play a role in causing arrhythmias, he couldn't implicate them as the cause for O'Neal's condition, finding that it was trigger by exercise, according to the decision.
The court found that O'Neal's own testimony supported the exercise claim and reversed the decision by the JCC for reconsideration.