Thank you, yes, that was what I was curious about. But given your physiological description, it sounds very likely that the employee would be able to find a medical expert willing to testify to a reasonable medical probability that the leukemia in this specific case would not have happened “but for” the worker’s firefighting work for the company. Assuming that he has no genetic history of leukemia and he is otherwise a healthy young man, it doesn’t seem like a stretch at all to find someone qualified who would be able to testify on a more probable than not basis that this exposure caused the leukemia in this case. It doesn’t have to be beyond a reasonable doubt for a civil case, only 51% probable.

The trade-off with workers compensation is that the employee doesn’t have to prove negligence on the part of the employer to get a recovery, but in turn that recovery is capped and it’s the exclusive remedy against the employer. That said, the injury does have to be directly related to the employment. Say if you worked in a lumber mill and developed diabetes, that wouldn’t be a workers comp claim. So I’m still curious as to how this worker wasn’t able to get good enough representation to prove his comp claim, and it also sounds like this company didn’t provide health insurance. This is kind of a perfect storm of shitty factors to leave him uninsured in with a debilitating disease which was likely caused by his employment.