Beck v. State

• Decision Date: 30 October 1989
• Citation: 779 S.W.2d 367
• Parties: Carolyn BECK, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant/Appellant.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 367

779 S.W.2d 367

Carolyn BECK, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant/Appellant.

Supreme Court of Tennessee,

at Knoxville.

Oct. 30, 1989.

Stephen W. Gibson, Knoxville, for plaintiff/appellee.

Charles W. Burson, Atty. Gen. and Reporter and Elizabeth R. McCarter, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for defendant/appellant.

OPINION

DROWOTA, Chief Justice.

In this workers' compensation case, the employer, the State of Tennessee, appeals from the Claims Commission's award of benefits for a mental disability incurred when Plaintiff, a driver's license examiner, was assaulted on the premises of her employer's Driver's License Testing Center. The State insists that the assault was not a sufficiently acute, sudden, or unexpected emotional stress to support the finding of "injury by accident" and argues that the assault did not arise out of Plaintiff's employment. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment of the Claims Commission.

The Commissioner awarded Plaintiff 30% permanent partial disability to the body as a whole. Our review is de novo upon the record of the trial court, accompanied by a presumption of the correctness of the finding, unless the preponderance of the evidence is otherwise. T.C.A. Sec. 50-6-225(e). "This standard of review differs from that previously provided and requires this Court to weigh in more depth factual findings and conclusions of trial judges in workers' compensation cases. Where the trial judge has seen and heard witnesses, especially where issues of credibility and weight of oral testimony are involved, on review considerable deference must still be accorded to those circumstances." Humphrey v. Witherspoon, 734 S.W.2d 315 (Tenn.1987).

The facts surrounding the assault are not disputed. On Friday, August 7, 1987, Plaintiff, Carolyn Beck, was working as a driver's license examiner for the Tennessee Department of Safety at an office on Fifth Avenue in Knoxville. An unknown man entered the office between 1:30 and 2:30 that afternoon and asked Plaintiff's supervisor and a co-worker, "Where is that mean old Carolyn?" When told that Plaintiff was out giving a road test, the man turned and began talking to a license applicant's father.

After a short time, Plaintiff entered the office and announced that a car improperly parked near the entrance needed to be moved. The man who had asked for her earlier began walking towards her and indicated that the car was his. Plaintiff testified that the man started to put his arm around her shoulder as they were walking toward the door but that she stepped away from him and walked outside to give a road test to a waiting applicant. After Plaintiff got outside, however, the man came up behind her, grabbed her tightly around the waist with one arm, and whispered in her ear, "I want sex, sex, sex." Plaintiff turned, pulled away, and kicked at the man, and he jumped in his car and left. Plaintiff testified she was "in shock" after the incident, but was able to complete her shift.

Over the weekend, Plaintiff called her supervisor at home twice to talk about the incident. The Plaintiff testified that the more she thought about it, the more she felt that her attacker was a man who had been parked across the street from her office on the afternoon before the attack. Plaintiff had called the police to have them investigate the car, and one of the investigating officers testified that the man in the car was close enough to hear a radio conversation with the police dispatcher identifying "Carolyn at the examiner's office" as the person who had called the police. But apart from this and Plaintiff's testimony that her attacker fit the general description of the man the day before and was driving an "old black car" like the one the day before, there was no evidence that the two men were one and the same, and the Commissioner was not convinced that the two incidents were related.

On Monday the Plaintiff returned to work and asked her supervisors for referral to a psychiatrist to discuss the incident. On Wednesday she was referred and taken by the area supervisor to a counselor at a mental health clinic; however, Plaintiff felt the advice she received there was impractical given the circumstances of her work place. Plaintiff continued working for three weeks after the assault, but testified that her anxiety continued to increase to a point that she could not do her job correctly. She testified that three weeks after the assault, on Friday, August 28, 1987, she was standing at the back of a car talking to an applicant's mother when a jeep parked next to them backfired and she "started shaking and fell apart," which she reported to the area supervisor before leaving work early. Over the weekend, Plaintiff called her immediate supervisor at home to tell her that she needed to go back to the doctor and would not be in for work Monday. Upon the supervisor's insistence, however, Plaintiff reported for work Monday, developed a severe headache, and called her personal physician, Dr. Prince, that evening. Dr. Prince saw her the next morning and admitted her to the hospital for the remainder of the week, where she was also seen by Dr. Luttrell, a psychiatrist. She did not return to work following the hospitalization, and her employment was terminated in January 1988 when the State refused to let her return to work on a restricted basis with time off on Wednesdays and Thursdays for regular sessions with her psychiatrist.

Dr. Luttrell testified by deposition that he diagnosed Plaintiff's condition as a post-traumatic stress disorder, linked to a rape she suffered ten years earlier and aggravated or "jarred to a head" by the incident on August 7, 1987. He admitted that "[t]he predisposing thing may have been the rape," and that anxiety over the relocation of her workplace three years earlier to a neighborhood she perceived as dangerous appeared to have "considerable impact" on her job performance so that her stress "was building" before the assault in August 1987. The doctor testified, however, that Plaintiff suffered a permanent emotional impairment as a result of the workplace assault.

Defendant does not dispute the finding that Plaintiff was sexually accosted by an unknown man in the course of her employment. Defendant denies, however, that the August 7, 1987 assault was a compensable "accident" within the meaning of the workers' compensation laws, arguing instead that the incident was "within the bounds of emotional stress common to most contracts of employment."

There is no requirement under the Tennessee Workers' Compensation Laws that an accident be either physical or traumatic in nature. See Cabe v. Union Carbide Corp., 644 S.W.2d 397, 399 (Tenn.1983). This Court recognized in Jose v. Equifax, 556 S.W.2d 82, 84 (Tenn.1977), that "a mental stimulus, such as fright, shock, or even excessive, unexpected anxiety could amount to an 'accident' sufficient to justify an award for a resulting mental or nervous disorder." In Jose, the claimant alleged a severe psychiatric illness resulting from work stress of a...