Recently, the First District Court of Appeals in Florida issued an opinion in an appeal involving a workers’ compensation claim from a correctional officer who suffered a cardiac arrest. According to the record, while the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) initially accepted compensability under Florida’s “pay-and-investigate” law, the BCSO later denied the claim. The correctional officer countered the denial, stating his claim was valid under the so-called “Heart-Lung” statute, which creates a presumption in favor of firefighters, police officers, correctional officers, and others that any “condition or impairment” that is “caused by tuberculosis, heart disease, or hypertension resulting in total or partial disability or death shall be presumed to have been accidental and to have been suffered in the line of duty unless the contrary [is] shown by competent evidence.”
The judge of compensation claims (JCC) denied his claims, reasoning that the correctional officer “must have successfully passed the physical examination required by this subsection upon entering into service as a . . . correctional officer . . . with the employing agency, which examination must have failed to reveal any evidence of tuberculosis, heart disease, or hypertension.” While the JCC found that the correctional officer did not successfully pass a physical examination upon entering service as a correctional officer, that was due to the fact that the BCSO does not require correctional officers that were previously working part-time to take a physical examination upon beginning service as full-time correctional officers. The plaintiff passed a physical examination when he initially began work as a part-time correctional officer.
In fact, in a dissenting opinion, it is highlighted that the employer, BCSO, failed to require and affirmatively disavowed the need for a renewed physical examination for the plaintiff or any part-time correctional officer who is promoted to full-time employment. BCSO’s policy affirmatively prevents the physical examination required by statute. The dissenting opinion states that, by failing to either require an additional test when part-time correctional officers begin service as full-time correctional officers or by disavowing the need for a renewed physical examination, the BCSO forfeits the ability to contest the statutory presumption that would otherwise arise in this matter.