I acknowledge the onset of symptoms occurred after the compensable surgery and almost towards the end of the eight-week period the worker worse a sling; however, the relationship between the right-sided symptoms and the treatment received is only in terms of a temporal relationship. While this is a consideration in determining causation, it is not the strongest evidentiary link. I other words, simply experiencing symptoms proximate to a compensable incident or treatment, in this case wearing a sling, is not sufficient to conclude the incident or treatment was of causative significance in producing the subsequent injury. Such a circumstance in this case relies on making a connection in hindsight—as nothing apparent occurred to have caused the subsequent injury, then it must have been the treatment for the compensable injury. Courts have cautioned against over-reliance on the nature of this unpersuasive reasoning as seen in White v. Stonestreet, 2006 BCSC 801: The inference from a temporal sequence to a causal connection, however, is not always reliable. In fact, this form of reasoning so often results in false conclusions that logicians have given it a Latin name. It is sometimes referred to as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc: “after this therefore because of this.”
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