LINCOLN — A judge has ruled that a former Papillion firefighter who suffered mental trauma while responding to a particularly horrific suicide attempt can get workers’ compensation benefits.
In a first-of-its-kind decision, the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court found for Timothy Gosch and ordered the City of Papillion to pay past and future medical expenses related to the trauma and to provide permanent partial disability payments.
The decision, released this month, was based on a 2010 state law allowing police, firefighters, and emergency medical workers to get workers’ compensation for mental injuries and mental illness caused by “extraordinary and unusual” events occurring in the line of duty.
Previous state law allowed compensation only for physical injuries, such as a gunshot wound or broken bone suffered on the job.
Omaha attorney John Corrigan, who represented Gosch, said the case was the first involving the mental injury law to go to trial. He said several other cases have been settled out of court, with varied outcomes. He said he hopes the new decision will serve as a precedent for future cases.
Corrigan said one issue common in mental injury cases has been the question of what counts as “extraordinary and unusual” for first responders who regularly deal with difficult and traumatic events on the job. Workers’ Compensation Judge John Hoffert answered the question by looking at the legislative history, dictionaries, and testimony from two of Gosch’s coworkers.
“The work of a firefighter/paramedic is inherently one which involves dealing with circumstances that the general public is not routinely exposed to,” he said while going on to say that the witnesses testified about degrees of normal duties that can range up to extraordinary. “Such was the case here.”
“The legislative history behind the enactment recognizes the absurdity of the notion that nothing can be deemed extraordinary because ‘you signed up for it’ or your job description references it,” he said.
Hoffert found Gosch’s trauma stemmed from one such extraordinary event that happened on Jan. 30, 2017, when he was dispatched to care for a young man who had tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. Gosch arrived to find the young man missing his face from the eyes down, yet screaming and being combative.
“The effects of that call upon Mr. Gosch were in his words, immediate and something that didn’t leave his head from ‘then until forever,’” the judge said.
However, Hoffert concluded that an event occurring on Feb. 20, 2022, fell within the functions expected of a paramedic. That day, Gosch was called to treat a minor who had suffered serious injuries from a motor vehicle accident. Gosch had to give the boy drugs to induce paralysis so he could be intubated.
Although the judge concluded the event was not extraordinary, it exacerbated Gosch’s symptoms to the point that, about three weeks later, he came close to killing himself. He called a co-worker instead and was admitted to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite treatment, he wound up resigning from his 19-year position in June 2022 because of continuing anxiety.
Former State Sen. Steve Lathrop of Ralston, who introduced the 2010 legislation, said he thought Hoffert took a very thoughtful approach to interpreting the law and had come to the right conclusion.
“I think the judge was spot-on in his analysis of what is extraordinary and unusual,” he said.
Attorney Dennis Riekenberg, who represented the City of Papillion in the case, declined to comment other than to say the decision was under review.
Nebraska lawmakers have expanded the mental injury law since it was passed in 2010. Along with first responders, it now covers state employees who work directly with prisoners, state psychiatric hospital residents, and juvenile offenders in the state’s Youth Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers. It also covers county corrections officers in Douglas and Lancaster Counties.
The mental injury law was prompted in part by the mass shooting at Omaha’s Von Maur store in 2007 and by a Nebraska Supreme Court decision that year. The state high court ruled that the family of a state trooper who committed suicide after five people were shot and killed inside a Norfolk bank was not entitled to workers’ compensation benefits.
While saying “a persuasive argument can be made that work-related injuries such as that alleged in this case should be compensable,” the court found in 2007 that Nebraska only allowed compensation for injuries to the “physical structure of the body.”
The case involved State Trooper Mark Zach, who killed himself a day after the September 2002 bank murders. About a week before the killings, Zach had stopped a car carrying two of the men who later participated in the bank shootings.
Zach ticketed Erick Vela, who was convicted in the slayings, for carrying a concealed weapon. But because of a miscommunication or error, the gun’s serial number was incorrectly submitted during a check and the weapon was not identified as stolen. It was returned to Vela and later used in the killings.
