Opinion ID: 2586367
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: facts

Text: Appellant Buddy Manwill was employed as a firefighter by the Clark County Fire Department from 1981 to 2006. During his 1991 annual physical examination, Manwill revealed that, when he was twenty-four-years old (around 1984), he was diagnosed as having had pericarditis (inflammation of the fibrous tissue that surrounds the heart). Nevertheless, he was cleared for full duty then and in subsequent years. Starting in 1996, Manwill's chest x-rays and electrocardiograms revealed abnormal findings. A physician suggested that Manwill might have hypertensive disease or congenital heart disease and recommended further evaluation. During the following years, Manwill continued to have abnormal test results and underwent several cardiac evaluations, which ultimately revealed calcification of his pericardium. While some light-duty job restrictions were intermittently imposed, Manwill was otherwise cleared for full-duty firefighter work. In autumn 2005, magnetic resonance imaging showed constrictive pericarditis, and a physician recommended that Manwill undergo diagnostic catheterization and consideration for a pericardiectomy. Meanwhile, however, Manwill was released for full duty. Shortly thereafter, Manwill filed an occupational disease claim for constrictive pericarditis, but his claim was summarily denied in a letter pointing only to NRS 617.457(1), the firefighters' conclusive presumption statute. Under that statute, as noted above, the heart disease of a claimant who has been continuously employed as a full-time firefighter for five or more years before the date of disablement [is] conclusively presumed to be work-related. Manwill administratively appealed the claim denial, and an appeals officer determined that, even though Manwill qualified for the conclusive presumption as a full-time firefighter employed with respondent Clark County for more than five years, the conclusive presumption statute did not apply to his claim because Manwill's heart condition, first diagnosed in 1984, predated the completion of his five years' employment vesting period in 1986 and, as medically expected regardless of employment, simply worsened over time. In other words, the appeals officer determined that [w]hile the presumption of NRS 617.457 relieves a firefighter from having to demonstrate the extent to which his occupation may have contributed to his heart disease, [Manwill's] occupation as a firefighter is not a contributing factor to the progression of his pericarditis and therefore the presumption does not apply  [a] congenital heart condition does not become an occupational disease based upon a firefighter[']s qualification for coverage under NRS 617.457. [2] After the district court denied judicial review, Manwill appealed.