employer to rebut presumption in Pennsylvania

2022City of Philadelphia v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Kriebel), 29 A.3d 762, 769 (Pa. 2011) (citations omitted) (emphasis added); see Section 301(e) of the Act, added by the Act of October 17, 1972, P.L. 930, 77 P.S. §413 (“if it be shown that the employe, at or immediately before the date of disability, was employed in any occupation or industry in which the occupational disease is a hazard, it shall be presumed that the employe’s occupational disease arose out of and in the course of his employment, but this presumption shall not be conclusive”).

2013Thereafter, the evidentiary burden shifts to the employer to rebut the presumption with substantial, competent evidence. 29 A.3d at 769 .

2018See City of Littleton , 370 P.3d at 169 (explaining that "nothing in [the statute] prohibits the employer from seeking ... to establish the lack of general causation by showing ... that the firefighter's work exposures are not capable of causing the firefighter's condition or health impairment").

2013A second evidentiary tool used by factfinders is a “permissive inference,” which is “no more than a logical tool enabling the trier of fact to proceed from one fact to another, if the trier believes that the weight of the evidence and the experiential accuracy of the inference warrant so doing.... [T]he trier of fact can reject the inference in whole or in part.” Commonwealth v. Shaffer, 447 Pa. 91 , 288 A.2d 727, 735 (1972), citing 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2491 (3d ed.1940).

2013A second evidentiary tool used by factfinders is a “permissive inference,” which is “no more than a logical tool enabling the trier of fact to proceed from one fact to another, if the trier believes that the weight of the evidence and the experiential accuracy of the inference warrant so doing.... [T]he trier of fact can reject the inference in whole or in part.” Commonwealth v. Shaffer, 447 Pa. 91 , 288 A.2d 727, 735 (1972), citing 9 Wigmore, Evidence § 2491 (3d ed.1940).