Fall at work blocked cancer treatment, then he died – court rejects benefits
Nebraska's highest court upheld the denial of workers' compensation death benefits to a widow who claimed her husband's workplace fall delayed life-extending cancer treatment.
The May 22, 2026 ruling is a useful read for any HR or risk leader who has watched a comp claim grow more complicated because the worker had an illness before the accident. The Nebraska Supreme Court did not reject the underlying theory. It just made clear how hard it is to prove.
Thomas Hastreiter was diagnosed with urothelial carcinoma in December 2021 and kept working for Foltz Brothers, Inc. as a truckdriver and farm laborer. On September 26, 2022, he fell at work and injured his left hip. Three days later, while hospitalized, his oncologist told him the cancer had spread and recommended a form of immunotherapy once he recovered from the hip injury.
He never received it. Hip surgery led to an infection. The treatment never started. Thomas died on December 14, 2022. His death certificate named progressive metastatic cancer as the immediate cause, and a section for contributing conditions stated that complications and infection from the hip injury delayed treatment.
His widow, Kristine Hastreiter, filed for statutory death benefits under Nebraska's Workers' Compensation Act. Her argument was narrow: the fall did not cause the cancer, but it kept her husband from getting treatment that would have extended his life. That, she said, should be enough to recover.
The Workers' Compensation Court said it wasn't. On appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court agreed, in an opinion by Justice Papik.
Under state law, comp claimants generally have to prove causation through expert medical testimony. The opinion has to be definite. Wording like could, may, or possibly does not clear the bar.
Thomas' oncologist, Dr. Samer Renno, wrote that earlier immunotherapy may have made a difference in prolonging Thomas' life, assuming the treatment was effective. The compensation court found that opinion hedged in more ways than one. The Supreme Court agreed.
The employer's expert, Dr. Benjamin Teply, was more specific. He pointed to survival models suggesting Thomas might have lived 3 to 6 months from the date metastatic cancer was diagnosed had treatment started – against the roughly 3 months he actually lived. But Dr. Teply also said the hip injury did not cause, aggravate, or accelerate the cancer's growth.
The Supreme Court held that even Dr. Teply's more specific numbers stopped short of an opinion to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, and that the compensation court was free not to credit it. A third expert, Dr. Morgan LaHolt, a physiatrist, largely echoed Dr. Teply and added little of his own.
Kristine was not left with nothing. The compensation court awarded temporary total disability benefits covering September 27 through December 14, 2022 – the period when the hip injury kept Thomas off work – along with medical bills, mileage, waiting-time penalties, interest, and $10,000 in attorney fees. All of that was tied to the hip injury itself, not the cancer death.
For HR and comp professionals, the practical signals are clear. Claims that link a workplace injury to a later death from a preexisting illness will rise or fall on the medical record. Sympathy is not evidence. Treating physicians who hedge will not get a claimant across the line, no matter how reasonable the underlying theory sounds.
There is also a strategic point. The Nebraska Supreme Court explicitly declined to decide whether a lost-treatment claim – one that says a work injury shortened life by blocking medical care – is a valid path to death benefits in Nebraska. It assumed the theory might be valid and still ruled the proof was not there.
That leaves the question alive for the next case. Employers, insurers, and HR teams handling claims involving employees with serious preexisting conditions should expect to see this theory tested again, and should be ready to scrutinize the medical opinions on both sides for the kind of definite, reasoned causation testimony Nebraska law demands.
