Pueblo v. ICAO

• Court: Colorado Court of Appeals
• Decided: February 19, 2026
• Docket: 25CA0858
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

25CA0858 Pueblo v ICAO 02-19-2026

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 25CA0858 Industrial Claim Appeals Office of the State of Colorado WC No. 5-209-220

City of Pueblo,

Petitioner,

v.

Industrial Claim Appeals Office of the State of Colorado and Bryce Boyer,

Respondents.

ORDER SET ASIDE AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS

Division VII Opinion by JUDGE GOMEZ Pawar and Graham*, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e) Announced February 19, 2026

Ruegsegger Simons & Stern, LLC, Michele Stark Carey, Lori Miskel, Denver, Colorado, for Petitioner

No Appearance for Respondent Industrial Claim Appeals Office

Michael W. Seckar, P.C., Lawrence D. Saunders, Pueblo, Colorado, for Respondent Bryce Boyer

*Sitting by assignment of the Chief Justice under provisions of Colo. Const. art. VI, § 5(3), and § 24-51-1105, C.R.S. 2025. ¶1 In this workers’ compensation action, an administrative law

judge (ALJ) denied Bryce Boyer’s claim for medical benefits relating

to his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Boyer appealed to the

Industrial Claim Appeals Office (the Panel), which reversed the

ALJ’s decision. The City of Pueblo now appeals the Panel’s order.

Because we conclude that the outcome in this case rests on a

factual dispute that the ALJ never resolved, we set aside the Panel’s

order and remand the case for further proceedings.

I. Background

¶2 Boyer has worked as a firefighter and medic for the City of

Pueblo for over thirty years. In 2016, his primary care physician

and his therapist diagnosed him with PTSD from witnessing

numerous traumatic events at work, such as shootings, car

accidents, and suicides. His primary care physician prescribed

medications, therapy, and time off work. His condition stabilized,

and he returned to work after two months off. He didn’t seek any

workers’ compensation benefits at that time (although, as we

discuss later, he wouldn’t have been eligible for benefits at that

time). Eventually, he began working in a different position that

didn’t involve responding to emergency calls.

1 ¶3 In March 2022, Boyer received news that a coworker had

attempted suicide by hanging. Boyer had been called to the scene

of suicides by hanging as part of his previous work as a firefighter

and medic. He went to the hospital and stayed with the coworker,

who was unconscious and had marks on his neck, for several hours

until the coworker’s family arrived. The coworker survived.

¶4 The next month, Boyer visited his primary care physician,

partly due to a respiratory illness. According to the physician’s

notes, Boyer reported that a change in his shifts earlier that year,

including working two fourteen-hour night shifts each week, had

affected his sleeping patterns and that his stress, anxiety, and

anger issues and feelings of depression had returned. His

physician prescribed new medications and suggested continued

therapy. The notes from a follow-up visit a few weeks later indicate

that treatment had somewhat helped but that Boyer was still

experiencing stress.

¶5 In May 2022, Boyer filed an accident report with the city,

citing a “significant increase in depression” due to “exposure to

co-worker with life-threatening injury.”

2 ¶6 Shortly thereafter, Boyer began treatment with Dr. Thomas

Centi, an occupational medicine physician. Dr. Centi documented

that Boyer reported a “traumatic event dealing with an injured and

tragically ill employee” and had been treated by his primary care

physician but that his issues with recall, stress, and sleep had

become more severe. Dr. Centi diagnosed Boyer with PTSD and

referred him to a psychiatrist.

¶7 The psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Moe, noted that Boyer had

experienced “an upsurge in a range of psychiatric symptoms,

including depression, anger, and anxiety, set in motion by the near-

fatal suicide attempt of a fellow firefighter.” Dr. Moe also noted that

since the shift change, Boyer had started sleeping in his office and

was occasionally called out to large fires. As a result, his sleep had

been significantly disrupted. Dr. Moe’s impressions were that

“Boyer’s symptoms [we]re in keeping with PTSD caused by the

cumulative effect of exposures to emotionally traumatic events that

by themselves were not responsible for acute symptoms.” Dr. Moe

continued treating Boyer for over a year.

¶8 In early 2024, Boyer’s counsel applied for a hearing before an

ALJ because the city was no longer authorizing treatment with

3 Dr. Centi or Dr. Moe. The city responded by contesting “causation;

relatedness; claimant did not sustain an injury or occupational

disease in the course of or arising out of his employment;

preexisting condition; intervening event.” At the hearing, the

parties agreed to limit the issue to compensability for payment of a

single visit with Dr. Centi so that they could obtain an immediately

appealable order. The only two witnesses were Boyer and

Dr. Robert Kleinman, a physician who performed an independent

medical examination (IME) at the city’s request. However, the ALJ

also received detailed notes from Dr. Centi’s and Dr. Moe’s files. At

the conclusion of the hearing, the ALJ issued an order denying

compensability. Boyer appealed to the Panel, which reversed the

ALJ’s order and awarded the requested medical benefit. The city

now appeals.

II. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶9 We may set aside an order entered by the Panel only upon the

following grounds:

That the findings of fact are not sufficient to permit appellate review; that conflicts in the evidence are not resolved in the record; that the findings of fact are not supported by the evidence; that the findings of fact do not

4 support the order; or that the award or denial of benefits is not supported by applicable law.

§ 8-43-308, C.R.S. 2025.

¶ 10 We may not alter an ALJ’s factual findings if they are

supported by substantial evidence. Id.; Kilpatrick v. Indus. Claim

Appeals Off., 2015 COA 30, ¶ 59. Substantial evidence is that

amount of probative evidence that a rational fact finder would

accept as adequate to support a conclusion, without regard to the

existence of conflicting evidence. Metro Moving & Storage Co. v.

Gussert, 914 P.2d 411, 414 (Colo. App. 1995). Accordingly,

evidence that is probative, credible, and competent, such that it

warrants a reasonable belief in the existence of a particular fact, is

considered substantial evidence. Town of Kiowa v. Indus. Claim

Appeals Off., 2024 COA 36, ¶ 11.

¶ 11 Until July 2018, a claimant seeking to establish a workers’

compensation claim for a mental impairment had to prove that they

suffered from a permanent disability arising out of a

“psychologically traumatic event” that was “generally outside of a

worker’s usual experience.” § 8-41-301(2)(a), C.R.S. 2017.

5 ¶ 12 But effective July 1, 2018, the General Assembly broadened

the scope of a mental impairment that could support a claim. A

claimant still had to prove that they suffered from a permanent

disability arising out of a “psychologically traumatic event,” but the

statute no longer excluded all events that were within a worker’s

usual experience. § 8-41-301(3)(a), C.R.S. 2025. Instead, a

“psychologically traumatic event” may include “an event that is

within a worker’s usual experience,” so long as “the worker is

diagnosed with [PTSD] by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist

after the worker experienced exposure to” certain kinds of events,

including, as relevant here, “repeatedly . . . witness[ing] the serious

bodily injury, or the immediate aftermath of the serious bodily

injury, of one or more people as the result of the intentional act of

another person or an accident.” § 8-41-301(3)(b)(II)(C). The

amended statute applies to “injuries sustained on or after” July 1,

2018. Ch. 328, sec. 2, § 8-41-301, 2017 Colo. Sess. Laws 1757-58.

III. Administrative Proceedings

¶ 13 The ALJ concluded that the amended statute didn’t apply,

reasoning that “[i]n order for this new section to apply, [Boyer] must

have the diagnosis of the PTSD from the event” — that is, from his

6 March 2022 encounter with the coworker who attempted suicide.

The ALJ expressed that he was “persuaded by the opinions of

Dr. Kleinman that [Boyer] does not have PTSD from th[at] event” or

from an incident half a year earlier involving an argument with a

different coworker. Because the ALJ thus found that Boyer “does

not have PTSD related to the events between 2021 and 2023,” he

applied the pre-amendment criteria to the earlier incidents Boyer

had experienced and concluded that the claim wasn’t compensable

because those events were within Boyer’s usual work experience.

¶ 14 In reversing the ALJ’s order, the Panel rejected the city’s

argument (and the ALJ’s apparent assumption) that, because

Boyer’s initial PTSD diagnosis occurred before the statutory

amendment, he had to prove that the events he witnessed after that

date were “sufficient to substantiate a new diagnosis of PTSD.”

Applying legal principles regarding occupational diseases, the Panel

determined that Boyer’s request for medical benefits to treat the

symptoms of his PTSD “need not be accompanied by the

establishment of a date of onset.” Instead, the Panel explained, the

medical benefits “must be shown to be related to treatment for

PTSD that resulted from repeatedly viewing serious bodily injury or

7 its immediate aftermath.” The Panel summarized some of the

medical evidence suggesting that the March 2022 incident “served

to intensify [Boyer’s] feelings of depression” and concluded that it

was “largely undisputed that [Boyer’s] request for medical benefits

is related and designed to treat his PTSD condition that arose from

his work-related PTSD diagnosis.” Therefore, the Panel ordered that

Boyer was entitled to the requested benefit.

IV. Analysis

¶ 15 At the outset, we observe that both parties have agreed in this

appeal — in their briefing as well as at oral argument — that under

the current statute, a work-related aggravation of pre-existing PTSD

may be compensable. But they disagree whether any incidents

following the statutory amendment — in particular, the incident in

March 2022 when Boyer learned of a coworker’s attempted suicide

and visited the coworker in the hospital — aggravated Boyer’s

pre-existing PTSD.

¶ 16 The city argues that by crediting Dr. Kleinman’s opinion and

finding no compensable injury in 2022, the ALJ impliedly found

that the March 2022 incident did not aggravate Boyer’s PTSD. In

particular, the city points to Dr. Kleinman’s opinion in his report

8 that “[t]he recent events” — including the March 2022 incident and

other incidents between 2021 and 2023 — “did not exacerbate or

aggravate PTSD.” The city also points to portions of Boyer’s medical

records that it claims suggest that the return of his symptoms was

related more to other (non-compensable) issues, like his shift

change and argument with a coworker, than to the March 2022

incident or that the symptoms he experienced weren’t sufficiently

severe to constitute continued PTSD. The city argues that this

evidence supports the ALJ’s decision and that it was improper for

the Panel to reweigh the evidence, reject Dr. Kleinman’s opinion in

favor of Dr. Centi’s and Dr. Moe’s, and substitute its own judgment

for that of the ALJ.

¶ 17 Boyer, for his part, argues that the ALJ failed to make any

finding as to whether the March 2022 incident aggravated his

pre-existing PTSD because the ALJ was applying the wrong legal

standard, viewing the March 2022 incident in isolation rather than

in conjunction with the various incidents preceding the statutory

amendment. He also argues that the evidence overwhelmingly — if

not uniformly — shows that the March 2022 incident aggravated

his PTSD. For instance, he points to parts of Dr. Centi’s and

9 Dr. Moe’s records that detail his increased anger, irritability,

anxiety, and depression and link them to the March 2022 incident.

He also points to parts of Dr. Kleinman’s report that he claims

demonstrate the exacerbation of his PTSD following the March 2022

incident. Thus, he argues, the Panel correctly rejected the ALJ’s

order and, applying the correct standard, determined that his claim

was compensable.

¶ 18 On close review of the order, we agree with Boyer that the ALJ

did not make any express or implied findings as to whether the

March 2022 incident aggravated Boyer’s PTSD. Nor did the ALJ

make any findings as to whether Boyer continues to experience

symptoms from his pre-existing PTSD. Instead, the ALJ found only

that the March 2022 incident didn’t, by itself, support a diagnosis

of PTSD. But that wasn’t the relevant question.

¶ 19 We disagree with Boyer that the evidence points only one way

on this issue. The parties’ contrasting positions make clear that the

evidence could support either finding — that the March 2022

incident aggravated Boyer’s pre-existing PTSD or that the incident

didn’t have that effect. Because the evidence is conflicting, and

because it is the ALJ’s role to resolve conflicts in the evidence, see

10 Miller v. Indus. Claim Appeals Off., 49 P.3d 334, 337 (Colo. App.

2001), we remand the case to the Panel with instructions to return

it to the ALJ to resolve this issue, either based upon the existing

record or after reopening the record to allow additional evidence on

the issue.1

V. Disposition

¶ 20 The Panel’s order is set aside, and the case is remanded to the

Panel with instructions to return it to the ALJ for additional

findings to determine, consistent with this opinion, whether Boyer’s

claim is compensable.

JUDGE PAWAR and JUDGE GRAHAM concur.

1 Counsel for Boyer suggested at oral argument that even if Boyer’s

PTSD wasn’t aggravated by — but simply continued after — the March 2022 incident, Boyer is still entitled to the medical benefit because he suffered an injury after the statutory amendment. We decline to address this issue because the ALJ also didn’t find whether there was any compensable injury after the amendment.