Trombley v. State

• Decision Date: 08 June 1962
• Docket Number: No. 34,34
• Citation: 115 N.W.2d 561,366 Mich. 649
• Parties: Esther TROMBLEY, widow of Charles Trombley, Deceased, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. STATE of Michigan, Coldwater State Home and Training School, and Michigan State Accident Fund, Defendants and Appellants.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 561

115 N.W.2d 561

366 Mich. 649

Esther TROMBLEY, widow of Charles Trombley, Deceased Plaintiff and Appellee, v. STATE of Michigan, Coldwater State Home and Training School and Michigan State Accident Fund, Defendants and Appellants.

No. 34.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

June 8, 1962.

Harry F. Briggs, Lansing, for defendants and appellants, Richard J. Anderson, Lansing, of counsel.

Rapaport, Siegrist, Miatech & Edgar, Lansing, for plaintiff and appellee.

Before the Entire Bench.

CARR, Chief Justice.

This case involves a number of features not directly involved in prior litigation in this State. The testimony is not in dispute as to the acts of Charles Trombley during the period particularly in question. The parties are not in accord, however, as to the inferences that may be drawn from his conduct, the ostensible reasons therefor, his demeanor claimed to have resulted from certain events over which he appearently had no control, and the circumstances under which he took his own life. At the time of his death Mr. Trombley was 37 years of age. He served in the army in the second world war. He was not wounded but was hospitalized because of asthma and neurosis. Prior to his discharge from said hospital he was married to the plaintiff in the present case.

In April, 1953, Mr. Trombley was employed by the Coldwater State Home and Training School as an attendant nurse, being assigned at the time of occurrences here involved to Cottage 43 where he worked with mentally defective patients. He continued in such employment until his death on October 23, 1958. The record indicates that his work was satisfactory, that it met with the approval of his superiors, and that he demonstrated his ability to perform his duties in a proper manner. During such period he suffered from the ailments for which he had been hospitalized in the army, and at the time of his death was drawing a government pension of $100 per month.

Among the patients in the cottage in which Mr. Trombley worked was Joseph Kibiloski. In some manner not disclosed by this record said patient sustained injuries as a result of which his relatives caused investigations to be made, including one by a legislative committee. In the course of such investigations a number of employees, including Mr. Trombley, were interrogated presumably in an attempt to discover the facts with reference to the injury to the inmate. Because of the repeated interrogations, particularly by members of the legislative committee, Mr. Trombley became depressed. Apparently he felt that he was being unjustly accused, by the form of the questions propounded to him, of misconduct in the performance of his duties. It does not appear that he became angry or resentful, but felt aggrieved by what he considered accusations made unjustly against him.

He discussed the situation with friends who apparently undertook to improve his mental attitude toward events that were transpiring. Witnesses who had talked with him during this period testified in substance that while Mr. Trombley appeared to be depressed he did not indulge in manifestations of anger or lack of mental control but, on the contrary, appeared to have his faculties. Like testimony was given by the plaintiff in the present proceeding, and by her daughter. The sum total of such testimony indicates that while Mr. Trombley felt aggrieved by the repeated interrogation to which he was subjected he, nonetheless, maintained a calm demeanor and discussed the situation rationally with his friends.

During the evening prior to the day on which Mr. Trombley took his own life there was a television broadcast to the effect that the legislative committee was preparing to continue with its investigation. Mrs. Trombley was with her husband and both heard the announcement. According to her testimony, Mr. Trombley made no comment but threw up his hands and went to bed. The following excerpt from her testimony indicates the situation at the time:

'Q. Had Mr. Trombley had any difficulty sleeping before this investigation?

'A. No.

'Q. Did he have difficulty sleeping after?

'A. No, not unless he had an asthma attack.

'Q. In other words, after you and Mr. Trombley heard the newscast, he threw up his arm, did he say anything?

'A. No, just threw his hands up, like that, and went to bed.'

It further appears that the next morning Mr. Trombley got up without awakening his wife, dressed in his usual working garments, left the house without disturbing anyone, and drove to a somewhat secluded spot approximately one mile distant from his home where he shot himself in the chest with a rifle that he had in the car. There is no showing as to the time when the weapon was put in the automobile but Mrs. Trombley testified that it was habitually in the room occupied by herself and her husband, beneath the bed therein. Apparently death was instantaneous or practically so.

The present proceeding was instituted by Mrs. Trombley by application for hearing and adjustment of claim filed with the workmen's compensation department of the State on December 24, 1958. Said application was based on the occurrence of a 'personal injury' on or about October 23, 1958, alleged as: 'Suicide due to irresistible impulse caused by incidents in the course of employment.' Defendants denied liability, alleging that plaintiff's claim was not based on the result of an occupational injury or disease and did not arise out of or in the course of employment. Following hearing the referee awarded compensation and the appeal board affirmed, holding that Mr. Trombley's death was directly due to the legislative 'investigation and its sequelae.' The appeal board further expressed the opinion that the death arose out of and in the course of the employment, adding thereto the statement: 'we believe it was associated with an uncontrollable impulse and not voluntary action.' On leave granted, defendants have appealed to this Court.

The mental condition which it is claimed resulted in Mr. Trombley taking his own life was not the result of a physical injury sustained by him in the course of his employment and arising from it. Neither was he afflicted with an occupational disease incurred in such employment. His asthma and neurosis afflicted him years prior to his entering the employ of the defendant State institution. It does not appear that either of such ailments was aggravated by his work. No claim is made that such was the fact. The uncontrollable impulse, if such there was, that impelled Mr. Trombley to take his own life was not the result of a physical injury or occupational disease compensable under the workmen's compensation law of the State.

It is of interest to note that in decisions in other States under pertinent compensation laws in which a claim for compensation has been based on the fact that the employee concerned took his own life while allegedly insane the question has repeatedly arisen as to the precise nature of the act. The inquiry has been in such cases whether death occurred because of an uncontrollable impulse, of which an injury was the proximate cause, or whether suicide was the result of a voluntary choice determined by the exercise of mental powers sufficient to realize the purpose and effect of the act. A comparison of the Massachusetts decisions in Sponatski's Case, 220 Mass. 526, 108 N.E. 466, L.R.A.1916A, 333, and Ruschetti's Case, 299 Mass. 426, 13 N.W.2d 34, suggests the controlling principles in cases involving the right to compensation when it is claimed that suicide by an employee has resulted from a physical injury. In the first case the employee was injured by receiving a splash of molten lead in his eye causing the loss thereof and, according to the proofs, resulting in an abnormal mental condition. The proofs indicated that Sponatski without warning and apparently without premeditation leaped from an open window in a hospital, the fall causing his death. In upholding the right to compensation under the Massachusetts statute the court referred to the rule followed in Daniels v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, 183 Mass. 393, 400, 67 N.W. 424, 62 L.R.A. 751, saying:

'That rule applies to cases arising under the Workmen's Compensation Act. It is that where 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 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 rules by a disordered mind, then there is a new and independent agency which breaks the chain of causation arising from the injury. See McDonald v. Snelling, 14 Allen, 290, 92 Am.Dec. 798.'

In Ruschetti's case, supra, a physician called as a witness by the plaintiff testified that, in his opinion, the employee whose suicide was the basis for the claim for compensation under the statute and who had sustained a severe injury in the course of his employment, resulting in the amputation of an arm, took his own life as the result of an 'uncontrollable impulse.' Following the amputation the employee suffered much pain, was restless, and disinclined to talk. He finally committed suicide by hanging himself in a barn. In holding that the opinion of the medical witness in question was not sufficient to support an award of compensation on the theory that death had resulted from an uncontrollable impulse of an insane man, it was said in part:

'The burden was on the claimant to prove that the injury was the cause of the death, within the rule laid down...