The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that a worker’s degenerative knee condition is an occupational disease and not a preexisting condition.

Michael Quinlan worked as a first responder in Baltimore. He first noticed pain in his knee while he was assisting a patient down a flight of stairs and continued having pain. He claimed that he suffered an occupational disease in the form of degenerative tears in the medial and lateral menisci in his right knee and filed for workers’ comp. He had been engaging in repetitive activities over his 24 years of employment, and a physician testified that any kind of motion or repetitive trauma could contribute to tears in the menisci or osteoarthritis. She testified that firefighters have a significant relative risk of osteoarthritis because of the nature of their work.

An initial jury found his injury arose out of and in the course of his employment. Baltimore County appealed the decision, saying degenerative tears didn’t count as an occupational disease, and that there could be many things in life that contributed to tears like this.

The Court of Special Appeals held that there was enough evidence to establish that his degenerative menisci tears were an occupational disease. Quinlan argued that his basic job responsibilities exposed him to conditions that could lead to his disease, he often had to kneel or squat to help people. The law says there can be more than one cause for his degenerative tears, as long as his work contributed in part to the tears, which there was enough evidence that it did.

Read the court case here and read more here.