Firefighters

The law gives eligible firefighters a leave of absence at full salary in lieu of temporary disabilityTD / TTD / TPD Temporary Disability, Total or Partial. Wage replacement while recovering. Two-thirds of average weekly earnings; 2026 maximum $1,764.11/week., for up to one year.

Full salary, not two-thirds, and not capped at the 2026 maximum of $1,764.11 a week.

(On tax: ordinary workers’ compensation benefits are generally excluded from gross income, and § 4850 salary continuation is generally treated the same way because it is paid in lieu of temporary disability under the workers’ compensation law. But § 4850 itself says nothing about taxation, agencies differ in how they report it, and this is a tax question rather than a Labor Code one — confirm it with a tax professional.)

It covers city, county, and district firefighters and the other classifications the statute lists — state firefighters are not on the § 4850 list. The statutory list is specific. If someone has told you § 4850 does not apply to your classification, that is worth checking against the text rather than accepting.

A presumption reverses the burden of proof. Ordinarily you must show the job caused the condition. Under a presumption, the condition is industrial unless the department proves it is not — and for several of these, the statute provides that the condition may not be attributed to a disease that existed before it developed or manifested.

Cancer. This is the one that matters most and is claimed least. The presumption applies to a firefighter who demonstrates exposure to a known carcinogen, and it extends past separation from service on a sliding scale tied to years of service — up to 120 months.

Read that again. A cancer diagnosis years after you retired can still be a claim. People do not file because they no longer think of themselves as firefighters. The statute still does.

Heart trouble, which can include hypertension when it affects the heart. Extends past retirement on the same sliding scale, capped at 60 months.

Pneumonia. Tuberculosis.

Bloodborne infectious disease and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. Meningitis.

Biochemical exposure.

Post-traumatic stress — § 3212.15, for covered firefighters and peace officers with injuries on or after January 1, 2020. It presumes PTSD is industrial, generally after six months of service unless the cause was a sudden and extraordinary employment condition. It extends after separation — three months for each full year of service, up to 60 months — and it is currently set to expire on January 1, 2029. Its dates have been extended before, so check the current text rather than an article, because the difference is whether you have a presumption or a § 3208.3 case.

The presumptions in detail, condition by condition.

Industrial disability retirement through CalPERS, a county system, or a city system runs alongside the comp case, and for CalPERS members Government Code § 21166 sends a disputed question of industrial causation to the WCABWCAB Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. The court system that decides these cases. 23 district offices statewide.. A determination in one proceeding can bind the other.

Do not settle a workers’ compensation case without knowing what it does to a pending IDR application, and do not let an IDR determination be made without knowing what it does to the comp case. This is the single most consequential coordination problem in public safety claims and it is routinely handled backwards.

Vigil v. County of Kern (2024) 89 Cal.Comp.Cases 686 (Appeals Board en banc) matters when injuries to more than one body part are rated together: it allows impairments to be added instead of combined where the medical evidence shows how each affects daily activities. Wilson v. State of California, Cal Fire (2019) 84 Cal.Comp.Cases 393 (Appeals Board en banc) matters when a psychiatric injury follows a serious physical one: it sets the factors for deciding whether that injury was “catastrophic,” which allows the psychiatric impairment to be rated.