Petty v. Associated Transport, Inc.

• Decision Date: 15 April 1970
• Docket Number: No. 20,20
• Citation: 276 N.C. 417,173 S.E.2d 321
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: Mrs. Ruby W. PETTY, Widow, Edgar Petty, Deceased, Employee v. ASSOCIATED TRANSPORT, INC., Self-Insurer.

Page 321

173 S.E.2d 321

276 N.C. 417

Mrs. Ruby W. PETTY, Widow, Edgar Petty, Deceased, Employee v. ASSOCIATED TRANSPORT, INC., Self-Insurer.

No. 20.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

April 15, 1970.

John H. Vernon and W. R. Dalton, Jr., Burlington, for plaintiff appellant.

Jordan, Wright, Nichols, Caffrey & Hill, by Luke Wright and Edward L. Murrelle, Greensboro, for defendant appellee.

SHARP, Justice.

The opinion and award of the full Commission, which struck Commissioner Marshall's finding that there was no causal relation between Petty's suicide and the accident on 13 February 1966, discloses: (1) As to the facts, the Commission was convinced that Petty intentionally took his own life, but that his death was directly attributable to the injuries he received in the accident. (2) As to the law, upon these facts, the Commission thought G.S. § 97--12 denied to plaintiff any compensation for Petty's death.

G.S. § 97--12, in pertinent part, provides: 'No compensation shall be payable if the injury or death was occasioned by the * * * willful intention of the employee to injure or kill himself or another.' Plaintiff's assignments of error raised this question: Does an employee who intentionally takes his own life because of a mental derangement produced by a compensable injury act Willfully within the meaning of G.S. § 97--12?

Prior to Painter v. Mead Corporation, 258 N.C. 741, 129 S.E.2d 482 (1963), this Court had not passed upon a claim for compensation for the death of an employee who committed suicide while totally disabled from a compensable accident. In that case, the deceased employee suffered a blow to his head in an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. Headaches of increasing intensity followed, and twenty days later a cranial operation was performed to relieve pressure on the brain. Thereafter he was never himself; he was the victim of headaches, sleeplessness, emotional instability, and periods of blankness. On the morning of 2 September 1960, after a sleepless night, Painter hung himself. A psychiatrist testified that, in his opinion, Painter was so depressed, upset, and bereaved of judgment as a result of his head injury that he would be considered insane; in committing suicide he was dominated by a disturbance of mind directly caused by the injury and its consequences; and, 'in that sense,' his act was involuntary. The hearing commissioner found the following facts, which the full Commission adopted:

'That the accidental injury of deceased employee, Tolvin Edgar Painter, on July 21, 1960, caused the deceased to become insane and mentally deranged to such an extent that he had an uncontrollable and irresistible impulse to such an extent that he become delirious and frenzied without rational knowledge of the physical consequences of his act, without conscious volition to produce death on September 2, 1960.'

In using the foregoing words to express its finding in Painter's case, the Commission was obviously paraphrasing the 'Sponatski rule,' formulated in 1915 by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in In re Sponatski, 220 Mass. 526, 108 N.E. 466. In that case the court said that under the Workmen's Compensation Act the right of dependents of a mentally disturbed employee to recover compensation for his death by suicide was determined by the following rule:

'* * * (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 conscious volition to produce death, having knowledge of the physical 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.' Id. at 530, 108 N.E. at 468. (In 1958 Massachusetts rejected the Sponatski rule by legislation. Mass.Gen. Laws Ann.Ch. 152, § 26A (1958).)

Thereafter, for many years, the majority of American courts deciding the question here presented followed the Sponatski rule, or at least gave it lip service. Painter v. Mead Corporation, Supra 258 N.C. at 747, 129 S.E.2d 482; 1 A Larson's Workmen's Compensation Laws § 36.20 (1967); Annot., Suicide as Compensable Under Workmen's Compensation Acts, 15 A.L.R.3d 616; Comment, 31 U. of Cinn.L.Rev. 187.

In effect that rule incorporates the M'Naghten test for criminal responsibility. Under M'Naghten, if the accused should be in such a state of mental derangement as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, as not to know he was doing wrong, the law does not hold him accountable for his acts, for guilt arises from volition and not from a diseased mind. State v. Spence, 271 N.C. 23, 38--39, 155 S.E.2d 802, 814. Also it should be noted that the Sponatski rule was predicated upon the tort concept of an independent intervening cause. It eliminates the accident as the proximate cause of death if the employee had sufficient mental capacity to know the purpose and effect of his suicidal act notwithstanding he was dominated by a disordered mind directly caused by the injury and its consequences.

At the time we decided Painter, the Sponatski rule was still the majority rule. However, in writing the Court's opinion, which affirmed an award to Painter's dependents, Higgins, J., noted: (1) Sponatski's is a harsh rule which has been widely criticized as 'an application of the test of criminal responsibility not justified in workmen's compensation cases' and as confusing 'an intervening Act with an intervening Cause'; and (2) a growing minority of jurisdictions in this country are holding that the death of an employee is compensable if a work-connected injury causes insanity which in turn induces suicide. In Painter it was carefully pointed out that in affirming the Commission's award, we were not to be understood 'as fixing as our standard the rigid rule of the Sponatski case'; we merely held that the evidence met Sponatski requirements, the most stringent of all tests, and that further discussion was therefore unnecessary. See Case Law Comment, 42 N.C.L.Rev. 611.

Despite our intimation in Painter, however, the Commission cited that case in support of its conclusion that G.S. § 97--12 prohibited compensation to the dependents of an employee who intentionally killed himself. We do not think such an interpretation is compatible with the objective of the Workmen's Compensation Act, which is to provide for the injured workman, or his dependents in the event of his death, at the cost of the industry which he was serving. To this end, the rule is that benefits under the Act 'should not be denied by a technical, narrow, and strict construction.' Hollman v. City of Raleigh, 273 N.C. 240, 252, 159 S.E.2d 874, 882. Accord, Cates v. Construction Co., 267 N.C. 560, 148 S.E.2d 604; Hartley v. North Carolina Prison Department, 258 N.C. 287, 128 S.E.2d 598; See Comment in 45 Iowa Law Rev. 669 (1960).

To say, as a matter of law, that one who intentionally takes his own life acts willfully is to ignore 'the role which pain or despair may play in breaking down a rational, mental process. Harper v. Industrial Commission, 24 Ill.2d 103, 107, 180 N.E.2d 480, 482. Annot., 15 A.L.R.3d 616, 622. 'If the sole motivation controlling the will of the employee when he knowingly decides to kill himself is the pain and despair caused by the injury, and if the will itself is deranged and disordered by these consequences of the injury, then it seems wrong to say that this exercise of will is 'independent,' or that it breaks the chain of causation. Rather, it seems to be in the direct line of causation.' 1A Larson's Workmen's Compensation Law § 36.30 (1967); Annot., 15 A.L.R.3d 616, 622. As Fowler, J., pointed out in his dissent in Barber v. Industrial Commission, 241 Wis. 462, 6 N.W.2d 199 (1942) (a decision which applied Sponatski), when suicide is the 'end result' of an injury sustained in a compensable accident, it is 'an intervening act but not an intervening cause. An intervening cause is one occurring entirely independent of a prior cause. When a first cause produces a second cause that produces a result, the first cause is a cause of that result.'

In 1949 the Supreme Court of Florida adopted the chain-of-causation test. Whitehead v. Keene Roofing Co., 43 So.2d 464 (Fla.1949). See Comment in 16 Vanderbilt L.Rev. 275 (1969). Whitehead involved facts and a statute practically identical with those we now consider. Whitehead, an employee, sustained serious injuries in a compensable accident. Three months thereafter he committed suicide by swallowing poison. He knew the consequences of his act, but at the time he was suffering from a mental disturbance directly attributable to the injuries he received in the accident. The Florida Act provided: 'No compensation shall be payable if the injury was occasioned primarily * * * by the willful intention of the employee to injure or kill himself.' In reversing the Circuit Court's judgment denying death benefits to Whitehead's dependents, the Florida Supreme Court said:

'From the evidence, there can be no doubt that the death of the deceased was directly attributable to the injuries he sustained in the fall from the roof. * * *

'(W)e are not persuaded that the fact that a workman knew that he was inflicting upon himself a mortal wound will, in all cases, amount to a 'willful intention' to kill himself, within the meaning of the statute. We believe that in those cases where the injuries suffered by the deceased result is his becoming devoid of normal...