Case Name: Paul B. MARTIN v. RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY
Court: Supreme Court of Rhode Island
Jurisdiction: Rhode Island
Decision Date: 1986-03-28
Citations: 506 A.2d 1365
Docket Number: No. 83-438-Appeal
Parties: Paul B. MARTIN v. RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY.
Judges: 
Reporter: West's Atlantic Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 506
Pages: 1365–1371

Head Matter:
Paul B. MARTIN v. RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY.
No. 83-438-Appeal.
Supreme Court of Rhode Island.
March 28, 1986.
Robert W. Smith, Gunning LaFazia & Gnys, Inc., Providence, for plaintiff.
Seth Bowerman/Kirk Hanson, Hanson, Curran & Parks, Providence, for defendant.

Opinion:
OPINION
SHEA, Justice.
This matter is before the Supreme Court on appeal from a final decree of the appellate commission denying compensation to Paul B. Martin (employee). He had claimed a compensable injury allegedly sus-. tained in September of 1980 as a result of job-related stress. The commission found that the conditions under which the employee had worked did not reach that level of stress under which psychic injury would be compensable. We reverse.
The employee filed an original petition seeking compensation for "[njervousness, anxiety, loss of appetite, sweatiness," which he claimed was caused by job stress resulting from harassment by fellow employees. He testified that he had worked for Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) for almost a year as a utility person working the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. His duties included checking and fueling the buses and doing whatever else the foreman instructed him to do.
During the three months preceeding the termination of his employment, he was subjected to continual vicious harassment by coworkers. He testified that his coworkers accused him of refusing to participate in a work slowdown designed to discredit their supervisor. The employee "couldn't do that to the guy so [he] just kept [his] regular pace They also accused him of having written an anonymous letter to management reporting that workers were drinking beer in the bus parking lot. The union officials required him to give a handwriting sample in front of several officers and members to determine if he had any thing to do with the anonymous letter. The sample apparently persuaded them he had not written the letter because the issue was not mentioned again.
The employee was harassed by his coworkers in several ways. They refused to speak with him for three months but would talk about him in his presence. They wrote obscenities on his locker, the fuel stand, and the water tank usually referring to employee by name. A driver struck him intentionally, he said, with one of the buses while he was working at the fuel pumps. The bus backed up to the pump considerably faster than normal and caught his arm.
The employee testified that the harassment became so intolerable that he called his foreman and explained that he "couldn't take it anymore and [was] going to go see a doctor." He then went to the Pawtuxet Valley Emergency Room with complaints that he was very confused, upset, and nervous. As a result of the harassment he lost twenty-two pounds from his already small frame.
The employee voluntarily terminated his employment with RIPTA on September 12, 1980. After he left, he was assaulted by the union shop steward outside a bar. The steward approached employee, who was with his girl friend, and said, "You better go along with those guys or you are going to get it bad." The employee asked the steward not to threaten him. The steward then threw employee over the fence, jumped on him, choked him, and threatened to kill him. The record reflects that the shop steward was not aware that employee had left RIPTA's employ. Although the assault did happen after employee had left RIPTA it is indicative of the viciousness and the intensity of the mistreatment employee was subjected to.
A psychiatrist who rendered treatment to employee on two occasions testified that employee manifested all the standard symptoms of severe depression and said that it was directly attributable to "the harassment received on his job." There was marked sleep disturbance, great weight loss, and noticeable agitation. He diagnosed employee's condition as depressive neurosis and stated that depressive neurosis could arise suddenly, triggered by a single, traumatic event, or gradually, arising from a series of emotional traumas. The psychiatrist prescribed treatment at a community health center and concluded that employee was unable to work in any capacity. This testimony was uncontro-verted because all the expert testimony presented by RIPTA was stricken from the record.
By December 1, 1981, the psychiatrist recommended that employee could return to work, provided that he was placed on a different shift. However, employee returned to work on the same shift on January 9,1981.
The appellate commission concurred and adopted the findings of the trial commissioner. In his decision the trial commissioner stated that
"[t]his case is in my opinion within the mandate of the Supreme Court in the recent Beulah Seitz case, being a stress case without physical injury as a result of work conditions. The Supreme Court stated that in order to be compensable the petitioner must demonstrate a dramatic event of greater magnitude and severity than the ordinary day-to-day work conditions . Applying that law to the facts in this case, it appears to me that the fact that the petitioner here was in his own mind harassed, called a fink, and was generally the subject of slanderous statements by co-employees, the straw that broke the camel's back being the incident at the Bowling Green Tavern certainly is not a dramatic impact that can be laid upon the doorstep of the respondent-employer in this case. It appears to me that here, as in the Seitz case, the employee's problem is something personal to himself than something that he was exposed to at work. I am talking about as opposed to the Bowling Green Tavern incident. The activities and the contact with his co-workers at work, together with his differences of opinion with the union people there is certainly something that he had in common with other workers and I am not satisfied that he has established by a required burden of proof and weight of evidence that has been presented to me that this neurosis and resulting incapacity was work related and I will find as fact that it is not."
The appellate commission found no error in the trial commissioner's application of Seitz v. L & R Industries, Inc. (Palco Prod. Div.), 437 A.2d 1345 (R.I.1981). In particular, the appellate commission noted that the assault by the shop steward upon employee occurred after he had voluntarily terminated his employment and therefore could not be attributable to RIPTA. We agree with this last point, but we do not agree that the evidence in this record warranted a finding that this man suffered only from personal problems and differences of opinion.
It is well settled that on appeal this court is bound by the commission's findings of fact when they are supported by competent legal evidence and not tainted by fraud. Emmett v. Town of Coventry, 478 A.2d 571 (R.I.1984); Shola v. Dworkin Construction Co., 474 A.2d 1252 (R.I.1984). We shall review a finding of the commission only when a question of law or a mixed question of fact and law is in issue. Spikes v. State, 458 A.2d 672 (R.I.1983). A question of law exists when the facts as found by the commission and supported by competent legal evidence lead only to one permissible conclusion. Id.; DeNardo v. Fairmont Foundries Cranston, Inc., 121 R.I. 440, 399 A.2d 1229 (1979). In its decision, the appellate commission did not reject any of the trial commissioner's findings; therefore, the issue before us is one of law, not fact. Rega v. Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp., 475 A.2d 213 (R.I.1984); DeNardo v. Fairmount Foundries Cranston, Inc., 121 R.I. 440, 399 A.2d 1229 (1979):
In Seitz v. L & R Industries, Inc. (Palco Prod. Div.), 437 A.2d 1345 (R.I.1981), we were confronted with a situation that is distinguishable from the one now before us. In Seitz the employee encountered difficulties in interpersonal relations with other employees who did not respond to her supervisory directives. None of these difficulties were the result of malicious, intentional actions on the part of coworkers. Unlike the situation in Seitz, employee in this case was subjected to a concerted campaign of harassment and abuse by his coworkers that resulted in psychic injury accompanied by physical symptoms.
In ruling that not all psychic injury is compensable, we stated in Seitz that "though [the stressful period was] scarcely tranquil [it] did not exceed the intensity of stimuli encountered by thousands of other employees and management personnel every day. If psychic injury is to be compen-sable, a more dramatically stressful stimulus must be established." Seitz, 437 A.2d at 1351. The crucial question before us, then, is whether this employee's treatment by his fellow employees exceeded that level of stress encountered by people in the workplace every day.
The uncontradicted evidence in this case establishes that the stimulus that precipitated the employee's illness was the constant intense harassment that he endured during the last three months of his employment. He served RIPTA conscientiously even when he was faced with a work slowdown by all of his coworkers. Because of his refusal to go along with his coworkers, he was tormented. As a direct result of this intentional and malicious harassment he suffered psychic injury accompanied by drastic weight loss and other physical manifestations. The constant harassment and abuse he suffered exceeded the intensity of stress normally encountered in the workplace. Therefore, we hold that on the facts as found by the appellate commission, the employee, as a matter of law, is entitled to the protections and benefits afforded by the Workers' Compensation Act for his disability and medical expenses.
For these reasons, the appeal is sustained, the decree appealed from is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent herewith.