McCoy v. W.C.A.B. (McCoy Catering Services, Inc.)

• Decision Date: 11 December 1986
• Citation: 102 Pa.Cmwlth. 436,518 A.2d 883
• Parties: Diane McCOY, w/o Lawrence McCoy, III, Deceased, Petitioner, v. WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION APPEAL BOARD (McCOY CATERING SERVICES, INC.), Respondents.
• Court: Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court

Page 883

518 A.2d 883

102 Pa.Cmwlth. 436

Diane McCOY, w/o Lawrence McCoy, III, Deceased, Petitioner, v. WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION APPEAL BOARD (McCOY CATERING SERVICES, INC.), Respondents.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Dec. 11, 1985.

Decided Dec. 11, 1986.

John P. Koopman, Begley, Carlin & Mandio, Bristol, for petitioner.

David L. Pennington, Susan McLaughlin, Philadelphia, for respondents.

Before CRUMLISH, Jr., President Judge, and ROGERS, CRAIG, MacPHAIL, DOYLE, COLINS and PALLADINO, JJ.

PALLADINO, Judge.

Diane McCoy appeals from an order of the Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board which upheld a referee's decision denying Petitioner's fatal claim petition for her husband's suicide under Section 301(a) of The Pennsylvania Workmen's Compensation Act. ¹ We affirm.

McCoy's husband died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 9, 1979. He left a note telling his wife not to go into the garage but to call the police from her mother's home. Prior to his suicide, the husband saw a Board-certified psychotherapist, who later testified that stress from the severe financial difficulties of the family catering and food service business caused him to commit suicide. A Board-certified psychiatrist testified that, in his opinion, the husband did not commit suicide while he was psychotic or in a frenzy but instead elected, planned and executed it in such a way that he was fully aware of the consequences of his actions.

McCoy contends that the Board erred as a matter of law in concluding that McCoy's suicide was intentional. She urges that the referee, and the Board, should have applied the "chain-of-causation" test, as adopted by the majority of jurisdictions, rather than the "Sponatski rule" which, she asserts, would lead to finding that her husband's suicide is compensable. We agree that the "chain-of-causation" test should be adopted to determine if a suicide is compensable under Section 301(a) of the Act. However, when that test is applied to the facts of this case, benefits must be denied.

The referee found that McCoy's husband was aware of the consequences of his actions and concluded that McCoy failed to meet her burden of proving that her husband killed himself while "possessed of an uncontrollable, insane impulse or while in a delirium or frenzy." The test articulated by the referee was the "Sponatski rule," which was adopted by the Superior Court in Blasczak v. Crown Cork & Seal Co., 193 Pa.Superior Ct. 422, 165 A.2d 128 (1960). However, this Court has held that the rule should not be read too literally. Commonwealth v. Makar, 53 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 83, 416 A.2d 1155 (1980). Rather than requiring proof that a decedent was raving or raging against someone or something before he committed suicide, the rule has been interpreted by this Court as providing that where a suicide is admitted, a claimant must show that the decedent took his life during an episode for which the decedent was not legally responsible. Id. We consider the Makar interpretation to have been a substantial step forward embracing the so-called chain-of-causation test.

The chain of causation test is set forth in Kahle v. Plochman, Inc., 85 N.J. 539, 428 A.2d 913 (1981) and requires that:

[A]n employee's death by suicide is compensable where the original work-connected injuries result in the employee's becoming dominated by a disturbance of mind directly caused by his or her injury and its consequences, such as extreme pain and despair, of such severity as to overide normal rational judgment.

Id. at 547, 428 A.2d at 917. The test allows compensation if a suicide is caused by pain, depression or despair, resulting from a work-connected injury, so severe as to override rational judgment.

The Sponatski rule requires that a decedent act without conscious volition to produce his death and without knowledge of the physical consequences of his act. However, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, in its comprehensive Kahle decision, rejected these requirements as unrealistically allowing compensation in cases marked by violent or eccentric methods of self-destruction, while denying it in cases presenting "a story of quiet but ultimately unbearable agony leading to a solitary and undramatic suicide." Id. at 543, 428 A.2d at 915. The Kahle court accepted the chain of causation test as the more realistic and reasonable test. Under that test, even though a suicide was volitional or committed with knowledge of its consequences, a decedent cannot be said to have acted intentionally if his rational throught processes gave way to mere spontaneous response. We now specifically adopt the "chain-of-causation" test.

The elements which a claimant must prove in order to receive compensation under this test are: (1) that there was initially a work-related injury as defined by Section 301(a) of the Act; ² (2) which injury directly caused the employee to become dominated by a disturbance of the mind of such severity as to override normal rational judgment; and (3) which disturbance resulted in the employee's suicide. After examining the facts of this case, we find that McCoy has failed to prove that the injury which caused the disturbance that resulted in McCoy's husband's suicide was work-related.

This element is crucial to allowing recovery under the Act for two reasons. First and foremost, is the statutory language defining "injury" which includes the following: "whenever death is mentioned as a cause for compensation under this act, it shall mean only death resulting from [an injury arising in the course of employment and related thereto] and its resultant effects, and occurring within three hundred weeks after the injury." Section 301(c) of the Act, 77 P.S. § 411. The legislative intent as expressed by this language is clear: if the employee's death, whether it be by suicide or other causes, is not the result of a work-related injury, it is not compensable.

Second, under both the former Sponatski rule as adopted and applied by the Court of this Commonwealth, ³ and under the chain-of-causation test as adopted by the majority of jurisdictions, ⁴ the claimant must prove that the suicide is the result of a work-related injury. This requirement is necessary both to establish the employer's liability under the Act, and to eliminate workmen's compensation claims arising from suicides which are not job-related.

This Court has previously held that suicide may be compensable under the Act provided that the suicide is a direct result of a work-related mental illness. Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp. v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board, 91 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 480, 498 A.2d 3 (1985); University of Pittsburgh v. Perlman, 49 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 347, 405 A.2d 1048 (1979). In order to be work-related, the mental injury must stem from the decedent's functioning as an employee, not from circumstances which he or she encounters in another capacity. Klein v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board (Plaza Home Center, Inc.), 91 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 247, 496 A.2d 1346 (1985). Thus, in Klein we held that mental illnes is not compensable when the claimant did not establish that the illness resulted from the employment relationship, but rather from the claimant's ownership interest in the business and his loss of his investment, time and personal esteem. Id. at 249-50, 496 A.2d at 1347.

In the case at bar McCoy's fatal claim petition alleges that "the nature and cause of the accident were work-related mental stress." In support of her allegation, McCoy presented the testimony of Dr. Joseph A. Hempsey, a board certified psychotherapist, who testified that the decedent was in a hopeless or despair type of situation and was therefore suffering a stress reaction because "he was not successful in acquiring money from work ... and he wasn't able to acquire money to support his family." Dr. Hempsey further testified as follows:

Q. Doctor, do you have an opinion based on reasonable medical certainty as to what caused the decedent to commit suicide?

A. The stress factor on his life.

Q. And what caused the stress factor? Where did it originate from in your opinion?

A. The inability to provide sufficient funds, the failure of his work.

Q. The failure of the catering business?

A. Yes, indeed.

The referee accepted Dr. Hempsey's testimony as credible and found that decedent's "stress factor was a direct result of the financial problems of the business and resulted from the business going down hill." This finding is supported by substantial evidence and is in accordance with the law. It does not, however, establish...