A 59-year-old woman, who works as a cleaner and suffered from breast cancer, has seen how the Justice Department has denied her permanent disability after the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon concluded that her current ailments do not prevent her from carrying out her daily work. Despite the fact that after being denied disability, she was fired for not being suitable for her job, the Court determined that her ailments do not conflict in a disabling manner with the cleaning tasks.
According to the ruling (available at this link from the Judiciary), the worker began a medical leave in May 2023 and, after exhausting the 18 months of temporary disability (being the maximum duration), Social Security proposed her for permanent disability, but it was denied for not presenting serious anatomical or functional reductions “that reduce or nullify her work capacity.” After exhausting the administrative route and seeing her previous claim rejected, the worker decided to go to court.
In the first instance, the Court ruled in favor of Social Security. Given this, the affected woman decided to appeal to insist that her state of physical and mental health made her incapable of working. Curiously, after the first judicial refusal, her company terminated her contract due to “surgent ineptitude” after being declared unfit by the preventive medical service.
According to the ruling, the woman has a history of breast cancer diagnosed in 2004, in addition to chronic dermatological problems. On a physical level, he also has bilateral hip osteoarthritis (coxarthrosis), scoliosis, a mild heart condition and a history of thrombosed hemorrhoids. As if that were not enough, at a psychiatric level he has a history of treatment since 1993, currently suffering from an anxiety disorder and a personality disorder with “obsessiveness, dependent phobic-anxious traits and a tendency toward emotional instability.”
The woman alleged that her condition was chronic, that it interfered in all areas of her life, limiting her daily movements, and that it especially affected her performance due to her “cognitive rigidity.” Even so, the court refused to modify the text of the proven facts, recalling that the trial judge had already assessed all the medical evidence impartially.
Furthermore, the Court explained that, although her skin problems are painful, the patient “does not prove that she has suffered any temporary disability due to said pathology” in recent years, and that the limitation of movement she suffers “does not equate to the impossibility of ambulation.”
Therefore, the idea was to decide if the sum of all these physical and psychological problems prevented her, at least, from carrying out her usual profession as a cleaner. To understand it simply, Justice remembers that permanent disability requires that the consequences be assessed as a whole and represent real obstacles to completing the tasks of a job “with a minimum of professionalism, performance and efficiency.”
His physical and mental injuries are stable.
The court analyzed how the woman’s ailments matched her daily work as a cleaner. Regarding his joint and back pain, the magistrates conclude that they are “incipient” degenerative changes and that he is currently “stable from a clinical and radiological point of view” with a good response to treatments.
On the other hand, and regarding her mental condition, the TSJ explains that the psychiatric condition “does not justify deterioration of the plaintiff’s intellectual and volitional capacity” nor does it prevent her from attending to her tasks. That is, the court understands that, medically, the woman’s joint ailments “do not prevent her from most or the most important tasks of the cleaning profession.” Therefore, they conclude that his pathologies “do not currently incapacitate him for the performance of his profession,” denying his right to a pension.