Opinion ID: 2570165
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The chain-of-causation test

Text: The chain-of-causation test requires the claimant to establish an unbroken chain of causation between an industrial injury and the employee's eventual suicide. [18] Although the test varies slightly across the states that employ it, [19] Vredenburg urges us to adopt its most common formulation, which is outlined in Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Industrial Commission . [20] In Graver Tank, the Arizona Supreme Court criticized the voluntary willful choice test for failing to recognize the role which pain or despair may play in breaking down a rational mental process. [21] The court then renounced that test in favor of a better rule that would compensate suicides if the original work-connected injuries suffered by the employee result in his becoming devoid of normal judgment and dominated by a disturbance of mind directly caused by his injury and its consequences, such as severe pain and despair. [22] This formulation of the test requires the claimant to demonstrate that (1) the employee suffered an industrial injury, (2) the industrial injury caused some psychological condition severe enough to override the employee's rational judgment, [23] and (3) the psychological condition caused the employee to commit suicide. [24] For the following reasons, we adopt this formulation of the chain-of-causation test. First, unlike the voluntary willful choice test, volition and knowledge problems under the chain-of-causation test are largely eliminated. Since an industrial injury and its consequences may suppress an employee's will to resist the impulse to commit suicide, a claimant may recover under this test even if the employee's choice to commit suicide was deliberate. [25] In acknowledging human psychology's role in causation, this test is widely recognized to accord with principles of modern medicine. [26] Second, the test closely aligns with the remedial purpose of Nevada's workers' compensation scheme. [27] Under the voluntary willful choice test, work-related suicides are analyzed as potential independent intervening causes, and thus are viewed through the conceptual lens of tort liability. [28] However, in recognizing the the role which pain and despair can play in breaking down the rational mental processes, [29] the chain-of-causation test has no analytical kinship with tort concepts of fault. Because of this feature, the chain-of-causation test accords with the basic policy of this state's workers' compensation scheme: to deliver economic assistance to persons who suffer disability or death as a result of their employment, [30] regardless of fault, in exchange for limiting the tort liability of employers. [31] Third, the chain-of-causation test neatly harmonizes with our doctrine of compensable consequences, which permits claimants to recover for an employee's subsequent health conditions  physical or mental  caused by the employee's original industrial accident. [32] Thus, by requiring a causal connection between an industrial injury, a resulting psychological condition, and an employee's eventual suicide, this test is a logical extension of our workers' compensation jurisprudence regarding the compensability of subsequent employee injuries. [33] For these reasons, we conclude that the chain-of-causation test, as articulated above, most accurately reflects the compensability of work-related suicides in Nevada, and we hereby adopt that test. In accord with the evidentiary burdens under this state's workers' compensation scheme, [34] the claimant must satisfy this test's three-part showing by a preponderance of the evidence.