4/29/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Inocencio not entitled to permanent total disability benefits Anent Inocencio's claim for permanent total disability benefits, its propriety hinges on whether or not his illness was work-related. We find no compelling reason to deviate from the factual findings of the NLRC that Inocencio failed to establish that his illness was work-related. Thus, he is not entitled to claim total permanent disability benefits. This CoUI1has, time and again, held that the "factual findings of quasi-judicial agencies like the NLRC, when affirmed by the Court of Appeals, are conclusive upon the parties and binding on this Court."[21] "It must be stressed that in petitions for review under Rule 45 of the Rules of Court, only questions of law must be raised"[22] before this Court. Tonsil cancer or tonsillar carcinoma is, indeed, not work-related. The NLRC and the CA correctly ruled on this issue. It is not included in the list of occupational diseases. Thus, Inocencio carried the burden of showing by substantial evidence that his cancer developed or was aggravated from workrelated causes. As both the NLRC and the CA found, he had nothing to support his claim other than his bare allegations. We note that when Inocencio was repatriated, Dr. Cruz, the company designated physician, conducted the examination, diagnosis and treatment of Inocencio until the hispathology report showed he had cancer of the tonsils. Significantly, Dr. Cruz issued on June 9, 2006 his assessment and medical certification that Inocencio's cancer was not work-related or work aggravated. In determining whether or not a given illness is work-related, it is understandable that a company-designated physician would be more positive and in favor of the company than, say, the physician of the seafarer's choice. It is on this account that a seafarer is given the option by the POEA-SEC to seek a second opinion from his preferred physician. And the law has anticipated the possibility of divergence in the medical findings and assessments by incorporating a mechanism for its resolution wherein a third doctor selected by both parties decides the dispute with finality, as provided by Sec. 20(B)(3) of the POEA-SEC quoted above. Inocencio, however, failed to seek a second opinion from a physician of his choice. As already mentioned, Inocencio did not present any proof of work-relatedness other than his bare allegations. We, thus, have no option but to declare that the companydesignated doctor's certification is the final determination that must prevail. To recapifulate, the CA properly affirmed the findings of the NLRC that Inocencio's illness was not work-related. The NLRC's findings of facts have sufficient basis in evidence and in the records of the case and, in our own view, far from the arbitrariness that characterizes excess of jurisdiction. If Inocencio had any basis at all to support his claim, such basis might have been found after considering that he was medically fit when he boarded the ship based on the requisite PEME. Under this Court's ruling in Montoya v. Transmed Manila Corporation,[23] work-relatedness could possibly have been show, since the cancer of the tonsil, already latent when Inocencio boarded his ship, "flared up" after work-related stresses intervened. In the absence, however, of any duly medically proven work relatedness, Inocencio cannot . be accorded permanent total disability benefits. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/55782 7/10