Expanded Access to Benefits for First Responders Suffering from PTSD

Transcript:
On October 23 2025 the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court issued a thorough and thoughtful majority decision and concurring opinion in a landmark case of Ganley vs. Upper Darby Township. The case centered on one of our clients, firefighter Brian Ganley, who was a more than 20-year firefighter in Upper Darby Township and one of its most decorated firefighters.

Unfortunately, firefighter Ganley developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after he was involved in two separate responses involving the deaths of infants that he had attempted to revive by performing CPR After the infant deaths, firefighter Ganley was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by physicians he was sent to by the fire department.

He was found permanently disabled by physicians that he was sent to by the fire department in the Township. Nonetheless, the township denied him benefits. He filed a claim that was brought before a workers’ compensation judge, who utilized existing case law to determine that what he had gone through with the two infant deaths was not an abnormal working condition for a firefighter in Pennsylvania. As a result, the judge denied benefits. The judge’s denial was affirmed by the Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Appeal Board.

We appealed that to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, which issued very thorough and very, very thoughtful decisions and opinions regarding post-traumatic stress disorder and that firefighter Ganley was entitled to benefits. The court specifically stated that the package of the tragedies that firefighter Ganley found himself in, notably, the two infant deaths, were abnormal working conditions for a firefighter. As a result, they reversed the decision of the judge and the appeal board and awarded benefits to firefighter Ganley.

Also very noteworthy in the court’s adjudication was a concurring opinion that stated the abnormal working condition standard should be scrapped because it forces courts to struggle to draw elusive distinctions regarding occupations based on some complex records and information regarding each specific job. I think it should be scrapped because the abnormal working conditions come from a time when people did not respect or understand mental health, mental injuries or mental care the way they do now. And as a result, I think the Ganley decision has carved a new path forward by acknowledging and respecting and validating invisible mental and emotional injuries that previously would have been blocked by the rigid application of the abnormal working condition standard.

In the future, firefighters will benefit from this decision as they bring cases to claim benefits, because never before in the history of this commonwealth, never before the Court’s decision in Ganley had a firefighter ever been awarded benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder that did not involve some physical trauma as well as the mental trauma. I’ll let that sink in for a second that not once prior to firefighter Ganley was a firefighter awarded benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in this commonwealth, even though the condition was diagnosed by doctors that he was sent to by his employer, even though he was found permanently disabled by those doctors, he was blocked from benefits because of the rigid application of the abnormal working condition standards, which has now been weakened and if not set up for removal by the Commonwealth Court’s decision in this case.