"I got a hernia at work."

The public safety presumption

Hernia is one of the conditions the Labor Code presumes to be industrial for qualifying firefighters and peace officers — alongside heart trouble, cancer, pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis, MRSA, and certain blood-borne infections.

And several of the public safety presumptions extend past the end of employment, for a period tied to length of service.

Note also that SB 230 and AB 1125 (Ch. 404 and Ch. 291, Stats. 2025) changed the presumption landscape — pages describing the pre-2025 framework are describing something that has moved. How the presumptions work.

For everyone else

Report it in writing immediately and describe the mechanism specifically — what you lifted, how much, from what height, whether you twisted, whether the load shifted, and whether you felt it at the moment.

A hernia noticed the next morning is still compensable, but the contemporaneous account is what carries it.

Get it examined promptly. A documented examination close in time to the event is worth more than any later argument.

What gets disputed

"It was pre-existing" or "it's congenital." Apportionment is to disability, not to anatomy. A condition that never disabled anyone did not cause disability, and under Escobedo the opinion must explain how and why. More.

"There was no single event." Repeated heavy lifting over time is a cumulative trauma claim, and under § 5412 the date of injury is when you first suffered disability and knew it was work-related. More.

Two things not to miss

A recurrence or a second hernia after repair is generally a compensable consequence of the original injury, not a separate misfortune. More.

And chronic post-surgical pain and nerve entrapment after hernia repair are recognized — and under Hikida v. WCAB, disability caused by industrial medical treatment is industrial and generally not apportionable. But Hikida has been cut down, and the site that does not say so is out of date.* In County of Santa Clara v. WCAB (Justice) *(2020) 49 Cal.App.5th 605 [85 Cal.Comp.Cases 467] the Court of Appeal held that Hikida "precludes apportionment only where the industrial medical treatment is the sole cause of the permanent disability." Where pre-existing pathology also contributes, §§ 4663 and 4664 apportionment still applies. Sole cause is a demanding test, and the rule is much narrower than it is usually described.