Prolonged Solitary Confinement

Abstract

was a compensable occupational disease when it arose in the course of employment, and that the employee had the burden to prove the elements of a workers’ compensation claim, including that the employee had an occupational disease. The court noted that the PTSD presumption was invoked when one is employed in one of the enumerated occupations, has been diagnosed with PTSD by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, and does not have a previous diagnosis of PTSD. The county had also argued that other presumptions in Minn. Stat. § 176.011 (15) required employees to prove that they experienced a designated disease before the presumption would apply. But the supreme court noted that this section of the statute only mentioned medical diseases and did not use the word “diagnosis.” The court said that different meanings are presumed when the legislature uses different words, here “diagnosis” versus “disease.” Accordingly, the court ruled that the employee only needed to present a diagnosis for the presumption to apply, and that the statute did not require “such a diagnosis to be more credible or persuasive than” a competing diagnosis offered by the employer (Juntunen, p 740). The court upheld the WCCA’s finding that the factors to satisfy the presumption were met. The court also addressed the WCCA’s finding that to rebut the presumption, the employer must present significant proof to the contrary. The employer argued that Dr. Arbisi’s report was adequate to rebut the presumption, but the WCCA had held that because Dr. Arbisi’s report did not specifically address whether the employee had a diagnosis of PTSD in September 2019, it failed to rebut the presumption. The supreme court agreed with this analysis and noted that Dr. Arbisi did not evaluate Mr. Juntunen until 10 months after Mr. Juntunen notified the county of the diagnosis. The court upheld the WCCA’s opinion, and the case was remanded to the compensation judge for benefit determination.