Seitz v. L & R Industries, Inc. (Palco Products Division)

• Decision Date: 04 December 1981
• Docket Number: No. 79-61-A,79-61-A
• Citation: 437 A.2d 1345
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court
• Parties: Beulah SEITZ v. L & R INDUSTRIES, INC. (PALCO PRODUCTS DIVISION). ppeal.

Page 1345

437 A.2d 1345

Beulah SEITZ v. L & R INDUSTRIES, INC. (PALCO PRODUCTS DIVISION).

No. 79-61-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Dec. 4, 1981.

Lovett & Linder, Ltd., Raul L. Lovett, Lauren E. Jones, Providence, for petitioner.

Gunning, LaFazia & Gnys, Inc., Raymond LaFazia, Guy J. Wells, Tillinghast, Collins & Graham, DeWitte T. Kersh, Peter J. McGinn, Christopher H. Little, Providence, for New England Tel. and Tel. Co., amicus curiae.

Hinckley, Allen, Salisbury & Parsons, Robert W. Lovegreen, David W. Zizik, Providence, for Hospital Ass'n of Rhode Island, amicus curiae.

OPINION

WEISBERGER, Justice.

This is an appeal from a final decree of the appellate commission awarding compensation to Beulah Seitz (employee) for total disability resulting from a personal injury of a psychological nature allegedly arising out of the course of her employment during a period of approximately sixteen working days beginning September 15, 1975, and ending on October 3, 1975. The case was initially argued before four members of the court on March 4, 1981. This argument resulted in a per curiam opinion in which the final decree of the appellate commission was affirmed by an equally divided court. Seitz v. L & R Industries, Inc., R.I., 428 A.2d 788 (1981). Thereafter, a petition for reargument was granted, and the case was reargued before a five-member court on October 5, 1981. The posture in which this case comes before us presents legal and factual issues of first impression in this state. The facts as found by the appellate commission are as follows.

The employee had worked as secretary to the vice president and general manager of the Worcester Pressed Aluminum Corporation (Worcester) for approximately six years. The place of employment during this period was Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1975 portions of the Worcester enterprise were placed on the market for sale. One of the divisions known as Palco Products Division was sold to L & R Industries, Inc. (employer). At some time during the month of September 1975, the employer ordered the Palco operations to be moved from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Smithfield, Rhode Island. This change necessitated physical movement of office equipment, furniture, inventory, records, invoices, and machinery. The moving operation began on a Friday afternoon and was completed in a thirty-six-hour period. The employee and a former vice president of Palco Products Division, one Francis Maguire, were active in supervising and implementing the moving activities.

When Palco Products, under the new ownership, began operation on the following Monday, conditions in the new location were confusing and abnormal to a marked degree. Records were unavailable, the telephone service was inadequate, the previous tenants had not vacated the premises, and personnel were untrained. The employee sought to perform duties as office manager and secretary to Mr. Maguire but was also required to do janitorial and cleaning work and to protect office equipment from potential damage due to a leaking roof. She encountered difficulties in interpersonal relations with other employees in the new location. Her authority as office manager was not recognized, and office protocol was not satisfactory to her. She attempted to arrange a meeting with Mr. Maguire and other key personnel in order to work out these difficulties and to improve the organization of the employer's business at the new location. The meeting was scheduled for October 3, 1975, but because of the intervention of another employee, the meeting did not take place. As a result, the employee became so upset that she terminated her employment on the afternoon of October 3, 1975, and has not returned to work since that time.

Dr. Elliot R. Reiner, a psychiatrist who practices in the city of Worcester, had earlier begun treatment of the employee on June 10, 1967, for a condition he described as a depressive neurosis. After three office visits, the employee was discharged. The employee next visited the doctor on October 9, 1975, and described the emotional disruption she had experienced in association with occupational problems and conflicts during the period she had worked with the employer in Smithfield. The doctor diagnosed the employee's condition as an "obsessive compulsive personality disorder." The doctor stated, and the commission found, that the employee's rigid personality characteristic had been of long standing but had been aggravated by her employment from September 15, 1975 to October 3, 1975. The doctor testified that the employee had sustained an emotional trauma but had not experienced any physical trauma as the result of her employment.

The commission found that this aggravation qualified within the terms of G.L. 1956 (1979 Reenactment) § 28-33-1 as a "personal injury arising out of and in the course of (her) employment." Although the commission determined the aggravation to be entirely psychic, it found as a matter of fact and held as a matter of law that the conditions under which the employee had been required to work resulted in a malfunction of the body which gave rise to an incapacity to perform her customary work. Therefore, the appellate commission, with one dissenting member, sustained the decree of the trial commissioner and ordered that compensation for total disability be paid to the employee. We reverse.

Professor Larson in his treatise on The Law of Workmen's Compensation has set forth an analysis of three broad types of psychic injury. ¹ The first type is a physical injury caused by mental stimulus. An analysis of case law on this subject leads Professor Larson to conclude that the "decisions uniformly find compensability." ² There appears to have been only one case reported to the contra in the last twenty-five years, Toth v. Standard Oil Co., 160 Ohio St. 1, 113 N.E.2d 81 (1953). In that case the Supreme Court of Ohio determined that an injury must be physical or there must be a traumatic damage of an accidental character. Professor Larson criticizes this opinion as unnecessary under the Ohio statute and as contra to the great weight of authority. ³ Rhode Island has no reported cases in respect to such injuries.

The second broad type of psychic injury is that caused by physical trauma. The courts, including this court, have almost universally awarded compensation for this type of physically produced psychic injury upon an appropriate showing of causal connection. Greenville Finishing Co. v. Pezza, 81 R.I. 20, 98 A.2d 825 (1953) (neurosis produced by traumatic loss of eye); Imperial Knife Co. v. Calise, 80 R.I. 428, 97 A.2d 579 (1953) (incapacity from a fear complex following severe and painful fractures of fingers while operating a power press); Wareham v. United States Rubber Co., 73 R.I. 207, 54 A.2d 372 (1947) (anxiety neurosis following back injury). See also cases cited from numerous jurisdictions under § 42.22, 1B Larson, The Law of Workmen's Compensation (1980).

The third type of psychiatric injury mentioned by Professor Larson is a mental injury produced by mental stimulus in which there are neither physical causes nor physical results. Professor Larson finds "a distinct majority position supporting compensability in these cases" but concedes that "(t)he contra view, denying compensation in the 'mental-mental' category continues, however, to command a substantial following." Id. § 42.23 at 7-628. ⁴ In this field, of course, it is difficult to compare holdings in various jurisdictions because of the variation among the statutory provisions. Some statutes require accidental injuries. Other statutes, such as that of Rhode Island, require "personal injury" without the necessity of an accident.

A number of the states that have approved compensation for psychic injuries produced by mental stimulus have done so on the basis of dramatic psychological trauma. For example, in Bailey v. American General Insurance Co., 154 Tex. 430, 279 S.W.2d 315 (1955), characterized by Professor Larson as "(o)ne of the most impressive of the earlier decisions," the claimant and another workman were on a scaffold when one end gave way. The other workman plunged to his death in view of the claimant. The claimant thought he was about to be killed but was caught in a cable and did not fall. He managed to jump to the roof of another building. After this experience, the claimant was unable to continue in this employment as a structural steelworker. He would blank out and freeze, undergoing complete paralysis when attempting work in a high place. On these facts the Supreme Court of Texas reversed the Court of Civil Appeals and determined that the psychic injury was compensable.

In Wolfe v. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., 36 N.Y.2d 505, 330 N.E.2d 603, 369 N.Y.S.2d 637 (1975), after many years of rejecting the compensability of "mental-mental" injuries, the Court of Appeals of New York ordered the award of compensation based upon a dramatic set of facts. The employee had served as secretary to the security director of a department store. By reason of job pressures, the security director became increasingly nervous and withdrawn. The female employee sought to assist her boss by relieving him of some of the duties of his position and by serving as a confidante. However, one day she entered the office and found the security director dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shock of this encounter caused the employee to enter into a condition of severe depression which left her unable to work for about a year. In awarding compensation, the court noted, "There is nothing talismanic about physical impact * * *." Id. at 510, 330 N.E.2d at 606, 369 N.Y.S.2d at 642. In spite of the drama of this occurrence, Chief Judge Breitel in dissent made the following observation:

"In an era marked by examples of overburdening of socially desirable programs with resultant curtailment or destruction of such programs, a realistic assessment of impact of...