Opinion ID: 2551773
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: have technicians sustained legally cognizable injuries other than mcs?

Text: ¶ 50 Working backwards from the diagnosis of MCS, the district court declared all testimony relating to MCS inadmissible as not based upon inherently reliable scientific or medical foundation under Rimmasch and Utah Rule of Evidence 702. The court then disposed of Technicians' alleged fibromyalgia, CFS, and chemically induced cognitive deficits by proclaiming in a footnote with no cite to medical or legal authority that [t]hese diagnoses appear to essentially be MCS couched in different terms. After thus summarily excluding all of Technicians' expert testimony relative to injury without acknowledging the standard clinical diagnostic methods employed, the court announced that they had failed to establish the damages element of negligence. Yet the record is replete with evidence for Dr. Cullen's observation that Technicians are not making the symptoms up, [they] are very real, often extremely intense, life ruining symptoms, and therefore they have an underlying pathophysiologic basis. ¶ 51 The record indicates that Technicians suffer from symptoms of fibromyalgia, cognitive deficits, and CFS, as well as more transitory symptoms indicative of chemical exposure. Neither the district court nor AGFA has cited a scintilla of evidence for the proposition that CFS, fibromyalgia, and cognitive deficits cannot exist independently, and that they are nothing more than MCS couched in different terms. The bald statement that the illnesses display nearly identical symptoms and show significant overlap is not evidence of medical identity of MCS, fibromyalgia, CFS, and cognitive deficits. The very fact that the other conditions have been medically recognized as diagnoses, while MCS has not, supports the distinction. Neither AGFA nor the district court has challenged the validity of these stand-apart conditions as medically recognized diagnoses. ¶ 52 Expert testimony is typically freely admitted for all three of these conditions, and courts have recognized all three as bases for accommodations and awards. See, e.g., Weixel v. Bd. of Educ., 287 F.3d 138, 146-48 (2d Cir.2002) (finding plaintiff diagnosed with CFS and fibromyalgia disabled within the meaning of the Americans With Disabilities Act); Carson v. Canada Life Assurance, 28 Fed.Appx. 262, 263-64 (4th Cir.2002) (per curiam) (unpublished opinion) (finding no reasonable basis to withhold insurance benefits where medical evidence indicated that plaintiff had fibromyalgia and was unable to perform her customary duties); Vega v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 265 F.3d 1214, 1219-20 (11th Cir.2001) (finding that the ALJ erroneously rejected diagnosis of CFS, and gave insufficient weight to plaintiff's expert testimony where medical evidence and plaintiff's testimony supported diagnosis); Godbey v. Apfel, 238 F.3d 803, 807-10 (7th Cir.2000) (vacating and remanding ALJ decision that failed to consider evidence of plaintiff's cognitive deficits); Kearney v. Standard Ins. Co., 175 F.3d 1084, 1091-94 (9th Cir.1999) (reversing summary judgment on genuine issue of material fact regarding plaintiff's disability due to cognitive impairment). ¶ 53 Moreover, in Summers our own Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has admitted expert testimony of a medically accepted diagnosis relative to the same symptoms for which it had excluded MCS-related testimony. 132 F.3d at 603-06. There, the court upheld the trial court's exclusion of expert testimony based solely on tests for MCS but admitted the testimony of a second expert witness who employed tests for an alternative diagnosis. The court observed that the reports prepared by Dr. Schreiber clearly indicate that both plaintiffs suffer from objective abnormalities which, in the case of Summers, he attributes to `toxic damage to his central and peripheral nervous system as a result of exposure to the fumes,' and noted that [e]ven if Dr. Schreiber's testimony were to be excluded on Daubert review, it could not be excluded for the same reasons relied on to exclude [the MCS] testimony. Id. at 605. Likewise, expert testimony of Technicians' stand-apart injuries cannot be excluded for the same reason the district court relied on for excluding all testimony relating to MCSthat the evidence lacks a basis in a valid and reliable diagnosis. ¶ 54 Although CFS, fibromyalgia, and induced cognitive deficits lack definitive laboratory diagnostic tests, they are not unique among recognized diagnoses in this respect. For example, as Dr. Cullen testified, until quite recently multiple sclerosis could only be diagnosed symptomatically. In the absence of modern medical imaging techniques, multiple sclerosis' savage demyelination of nerve tissue proceeded unseen behind the puzzling array of observable symptoms. Nonetheless, mere invisibility did not render the destruction unreal. Human ignorance is no deterrent to the wondersand horrorsof nature. Therefore, although proof must be more than merely subjective, Harnicher v. Univ. of Utah Med. Ctr., 962 P.2d 67, 71 (Utah 1998), we will not place impossible obstacles in the way of plaintiffs' attempts to prove objective damages. ¶ 55 We hold that the district court committed factual error in grouping all related symptoms and conditions together under the heading of MCS. We reemphasize that fibromyalgia, CFS, and cognitive deficits are all accepted diagnoses and that the record contains sufficient evidence of these diagnoses to raise an issue of triable fact. Therefore, we reverse the district court's holding that Technicians have failed to show legally cognizable injury.