A special meeting of the VCPFA Board of Directors will be held on Thursday, August 19 at 0915. The Agenda is a presentation on alternate Squad staffing models by Fire Chief Roper

Follow the link to see the battles that face our profession in the upcoming election and CPF's efforts on our behalf. CPF Newsletter 

The California Supreme Court denied the County of Ventura's petition
to review a panel decision stating that a Ventura County firefighter's
breast cancer is work-related.

The high court denied the county's petition for review in the case of
County of Ventura v. WCAB (Bastian). The county sought to challenge a
Workers' Compensation Appeals Board panel decision, which determined
that the firefighters' presumption of compensability applied to Sandy
Bastian's breast cancer claim.

The county had argued that the agreed medical evaluator's (AME)
testimony rebutted the presumption that the condition was compensable.

However, this did not persuade the WCAB panel, which noted that the
AME, Dr. Randolph Noble, "only opined that he was not prepared to say
that the (Labor Code) Section 3212.1 presumption of industrial
causation applied because he had not seen any studies that
definitively showed a link between a female firefighter's exposure to
carcinogens on the job and the later development of breast cancer."

Commissioner James Cuneo, the author of the panel decision, explained,
"In short, the presumption of industrial causation contained in
Section 3212.1 is not rebutted by showing that there are no studies
showing a link between exposure to a carcinogen and the development of
the type of cancer at issue, or by showing that the cancer could have
been caused by something else."

Cuneo clarified that in order to rebut the presumption of industrial
causation, LC 3212.1 requires a defendant to show that the cancer in
question is "not reasonably linked" to the exposure.

The employer had filed a petition for a writ of review with the 2nd
District Court of Appeal, but the appellate court denied the petition
on April 1. The state Supreme Court denied review on May 20.