Yates v. Life Ins. Co. of Georgia, 0875

• Decision Date: 08 December 1986
• Docket Number: No. 0875,0875
• Citation: 291 S.C. 301,353 S.E.2d 297
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals
• Parties: Christopher B. YATES, employee, Appellant, v. LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF GEORGIA, employer and self-insurer, Respondent. . Heard

Page 297

353 S.E.2d 297

291 S.C. 301

Christopher B. YATES, employee, Appellant, v. LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF GEORGIA, employer and self-insurer, Respondent.

No. 0875.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard Dec. 8, 1986.

Decided Feb. 2, 1987.

John W. Bledsoe, of Saleeby, Cox & Bledsoe, Hartsville, and C. Ben Bowen, of Abrams, Bowen & Parham, Greenville, for appellant.

William W. Watkins, of Turner, Padget, Graham & Laney, Columbia, for respondent.

GOOLSBY, Judge:

This is a workers' compensation case where the issue we are asked to decide is whether injuries resulting from a suicide attempt are compensable. The single commissioner awarded benefits. The full commission, in a divided decision, affirmed the award. The circuit court reversed. Yates appeals. We affirm.

In September 1981, Yates left the University of South Carolina, where he attended college, to take a job with the Life Insurance Company of Georgia. He started work as a sales agent but soon became a "debit" salesman. As a debit salesman, he collected insurance premiums as well as sold insurance.

Yates quickly became dissatisfied with his job. He disliked pressuring clients, mostly people with low incomes, to pay for their insurance and he disliked cancelling their insurance when they did not pay. Yates began to view himself as a failure and came to dread going to work. His efforts to find other employment proved unsuccessful.

On May 5, 1983, Yates went to work and performed his usual duties. Between 11:30 a.m. and 12:00 noon, he returned to his apartment for lunch, as was his custom. While at the apartment and after deliberating for about an hour, Yates decided to kill himself. At 2:40 p.m., he shot himself in the head. Yates succeeded in destroying only his eyesight.

Thereafter, Yates made a claim for workers' compensation. Life Insurance Company of Georgia denied that a compensable injury had occurred. It also asserted as an affirmative defense that Yates' blindness resulted from a willful intention to kill himself. See S.C.Code of Laws § 42-9-60 (1976) ("No compensation shall be payable if the injury ... was occasioned ... by the wilful intention of the employee to injure or kill himself....")

Yates testified at the hearing that he attempted to kill himself because he was frustrated about his job and felt like he was at "the end of [his] rope." When asked to explain why his job frustrated him, he responded, "I just didn't enjoy it, didn't like what I had to do."

Dr. Marvin John Short, II, a psychiatrist and Yates' medical expert, testified that Yates suffered from a "brief reactive psychosis" and that it "developed secondarily to situational stresses and pressure." Dr. Short believed that Yates' attempt to take his life "was a direct result of stress and pressures from the job."

The single commissioner found that, at the time Yates attempted suicide, Yates "was severely depressed and emotionally disturbed as a result of his job situation." He further found that Yates' "suicide attempt was the product of an irrational, temporarily deranged mind" and was done neither intentionally nor deliberately. The full commission affirmed the single commissioner in a 3 to 3 decision. One commissioner voted to reverse the single commissioner because "[a] mere [mental] breakdown without the presence of an unusual circumstance or condition of employment is not a compensable accident."

The circuit court reversed. Relying upon Petty v. Associated Transport, 276 N.C. 417, 173 S.E.2d 321 (1970), the circuit court held that a worker's attempted suicide is compensable where the suicide attempt is directly attributable to a prior physical injury arising out of and in the course of the worker's employment. Because Yates suffered no prior physical injury, the circuit court denied him compensation. See Annot., 15 A.L.R.3d 616, 639-40 (1967) (reference to cases that require mental aberration resulting in suicide to be traumatic in origin).

On appeal, Yates' principal argument is that the circuit court erred in conditioning compensation for a mental disorder that results in a suicide on a prior physical injury. See Findley v. Industrial Commission of Arizona, 135 Ariz. 273, 660 P.2d 874 (Ct.App.1983) (compensation allowed under a statute for a "mental injury" caused by "some unexpected, unusual or extraordinary stress related to employment or some physical injury related to the employment"); University of Pittsburgh v. Workmen's Compensation Board, 49 Pa.Commw. 347, 405 A.2d 1048 (1979) (an employee who was disabled by a work-related mental illness suffered an "injury" within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation Act, thus entitling his widow to death benefits when the employee committed suicide in an irrational frenzy).

Among the additional sustaining grounds advanced by the Life Insurance Company of Georgia is the purported error by the circuit court in not adopting the rule announced in In re: Sponatski, 220 Mass. 526, 108 N.E. 466 (1915) and applying it to the facts of this case. The Sponatski rule, among other things, also requires that the mental disorder causing one to commit suicide result directly from a physical injury. Annot., 15 A.L.R.3d 616, 628-29 (1967).

We see no need, however, to determine which of these rules the circuit court should have applied here because it is clear that the worker in this instance is not entitled to compensation in any event.

A compensable injury under the Workers' Compensation Act includes only an "injury by accident arising out of and in the course of employment." S.C.Code of Laws § 42-1-160 (1976). The word "accident," as used in workers' compensation, means an unlooked for and untoward event that the person who suffered the injury did not expect, design, or intentionally cause. Colvin v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co., 227 S.C. 465, 88 S.E.2d 581 (1955); Radcliffe v. Southern Aviation School, 209 S.C. 411, 40 S.E.2d 626 (1946).

Although the record supports the conclusion that Yates suffered from a temporary mental disorder and that his mental disorder caused him to attempt suicide, Yates offered no evidence that an employment related accident caused his mental problem. Assuming that a mental disorder is compensable if it is caused by an...