Hall v. State Workmen's Compensation Com'r, No. 15709

• Court: Supreme Court of West Virginia
• Writing for the Court: McHUGH
• Citation: 303 S.E.2d 726,172 W.Va. 87
• Parties: Helen HALL, Widow of Jesse L. Hall v. STATE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION COMMISSIONER and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation.
• Decision Date: 25 May 1983
• Docket Number: No. 15709

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303 S.E.2d 726 172 W.Va. 87 Helen HALL, Widow of Jesse L. Hall
v.
STATE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION COMMISSIONER and
Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation. No. 15709. Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. May 25, 1983.

[172 W.Va. 88] Syllabus by the Court

1. An employee's suicide which arises in the course of and results from covered employment is compensable under W.Va.Code, 23-4-1 [1974], provided, (1) the employee sustained an injury which itself arose in the course of and resulted from covered employment, and (2) without that injury the employee would not have developed a mental disorder of such degree as to impair the employee's normal and rational judgment, and (3) without that mental disorder the employee would not have committed suicide.

2. "On an 'appeal' from the Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board, this Court will not determine a question in the first instance which has not been fully developed or which has not been considered by the Commissioner and the Appeal Board." Syl. pt. 4, Billings v. State Compensation Commissioner, 123 W.Va. 498, 16 S.E.2d 804 (1941).

Barnes, Watson, Cuomo, Hinerman & Fahey, Frank Cuomo, Jr. and Mark B. Chernenko, Wellsburg, for appellant.

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Schrader, Stamp, Byrd, Byrum, Johnson & Companion, Ronald B. Johnson, Wheeling, for appellee.

McHUGH, Justice:

This is an appeal by Helen Hall, the widow of Jesse L. Hall, from a final decision of the Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board, entered August 31, 1982, which affirmed an order of the Workmen's Compensation Commissioner. That order denied the appellant's workmen's compensation claim. This Court has before it the petition for appeal, all matters of record, and the briefs and oral argument of counsel.

After working at the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation's coke plant in Follansbee, West Virginia for over 30 years, Jesse L. Hall, on June 17, 1975, filed a claim for occupational pneumoconiosis disability benefits with the Workmen's Compensation Fund. ¹ On June 23, 1975, Mr. Hall committed suicide. His claim was dismissed by the Commissioner on July 26, 1976.

The appellant filed an application for dependent's benefits with the Workmen's Compensation Fund on September 21, 1976. The Commissioner on January 10, 1977, denied her application, holding that Mr. Hall's "death was not due to occupational pneumoconiosis, nor was occupational pneumoconiosis a major contributing factor to his death...." Following a protest by the appellant, the Commissioner on March 8, 1978, affirmed the earlier ruling of January 10, 1977. The appellant appealed the Commissioner's order to the Appeal Board asserting that new evidence had been discovered concerning the mental state of the decedent at the time he committed suicide. The Appeal Board reversed the Commissioner and on May 29, 1979, remanded the claim to the Commissioner for the taking of additional evidence.

After taking additional evidence the Commissioner again, by an order entered [172 W.Va. 89] on August 4, 1981, denied the appellant's claim. The appellant appealed that order, however, on August 31, 1982, the Appeal Board affirmed the Commissioner's order and held that Mr. Hall's suicide was not "due to occupational pneumoconiosis [nor was] ... occupational pneumoconiosis ... a major contributing factor in the employee's self-inflicted injury."

The issue now before us is whether Mr. Hall's suicide is a compensable claim under the provisions of the West Virginia compensation statutes.

W.Va.Code, 23-4-2 [1969] expressly states that an employee's death, which results from a self-inflicted injury, is not compensable. ² However, the general rule, to which the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions adhere, allows compensation if a substantial causal relationship can be shown to exist between a worker's employment and that worker's suicide. ³ The most common language used to describe this relationship is that the worker's death must "arise out of and in the course of the employment." ⁴ 82 Am.Jur.2d, Workmen's Compensation, § 241 (1976).

An excellent discussion concerning a worker's suicide can be found in The Law of Workmen's Compensation by Arthur Larson. A portion of that discussion states:

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Most cases in this field present the same pattern of facts: a severe, or extremely painful, or hopelessly incurable injury, followed by a deranged mental state ranging from depression to violent lunacy, followed in turn by suicide. The basic legal question seems to be agreed upon by almost all authorities: It is whether the act of suicide was an intervening cause breaking the chain of causation between the initial injury and the death.

1A Larson Workmen's Compensation § 36.10.

It is well accepted that a worker's suicide is compensable if two facts are established: (1) an original work-related injury must be sustained by the worker, ⁵ and (2) that injury must, in turn, cause a state of mental derangement in the injured worker. ⁶ The controversy among courts which have addressed the issue concerns the standard which should be applied when determining whether a suicide claim will be held compensable.

Presently, three different standards have been used in other state jurisdictions when determining whether the suicide of a worker will be held compensable. They are: (1) the Sponatski rule, (2) the New York rule and (3) the chain of causation rule.

The Sponatski rule originated in Sponatski's Case, 220 Mass. 526, 108 N.E. 466 (1915). In that case molten lead splashed into the eye of a worker. Four weeks later the worker jumped from a hospital window and killed himself. The Massachusetts Court created the rule when it held that:

[W]here there follows as the direct result of a physical injury an insanity of such violence as to cause the victim to take his own life through an uncontrollable impulse or in a delirium of frenzy 'without [172 W.Va. 90] conscious volition to produce death, having knowledge of the physical nature and consequences of the act,' then there is a direct and unbroken causal connection between the physical injury and the death. But where the resulting insanity is such as to cause suicide through a voluntary willful choice determined by a moderately intelligent mental power which knows the purpose and the physical effect of the suicidal act even though choice is dominated and ruled by a disordered mind, then there is a new and independent agency which breaks the chain of causation arising from the injury.

220 Mass. at 530, 108 N.E. at 468.

However, the Sponatski rule has been criticized over the years. This criticism has centered around the application of the criminal law standard of insanity, i.e., to a worker's compensation case. ⁷ The argument is that in a criminal law murder case a defendant's understanding, i.e., knowledge of the consequences, is a crucial element, since it is necessary to the establishment of criminal intent. In a compensation suicide case, however, the issue is one of causation, not understanding. The Sponatski rule ⁸ has received further criticism because it applies the tort concept of an independent intervening cause when the element of fault was intentionally eliminated from the worker's compensation laws. ⁹

Criticism of the Sponatski rule has been so pervasive that few, if any, of the jurisdictions which initially embraced the rule

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currently apply it. ¹⁰ Instead, those jurisdictions adhere to modified versions of the rule. ¹¹ The cases in those jurisdictions generally have eliminated the "knowledge of the consequences" requirement and give a flexible meaning to "uncontrollable impulse." Larson, supra, § 36.22.

The second standard is the New York rule, which was established by Delinousha v. National Biscuit Company, 248 N.Y. 93, 161 N.E. 431 (1928). The New York Court of Appeals held:

Death benefits are allowed if the injury results naturally and unavoidably in disease, and the disease causes death. This is so if the injury causes...