Opinion ID: 2570165
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Appeals officer's decision

Text: Having concluded that workers' compensation death benefits are available for suicides sufficiently connected to an industrial injury, and having adopted the chain-of-causation test for determining whether a sufficient work connection exists, we next consider the appeals officer's denial of Vredenburg's claim for death benefits. The appeals officer purported to base her decision on the same chain-of-causation test we have adopted today. Nevertheless, Vredenburg asserts that the appeals officer's application of the test was clearly erroneous and that her fact-based conclusions were not supported by substantial evidence. We agree. While purporting to analyze Vredenburg's claim under the chain-of-causation test and attempting to distinguish this case from Graver Tank, the appeals officer, in effect, applied the stricter voluntary willful choice test. The appeals officer concluded that Vredenburg failed to establish a sufficient work connection under the chain-of-causation test because Danny's suicide was the result of a deliberate decision on his part and not an act of insanity.  [35] As we explained above, however, whether an employee acts deliberately is irrelevant under the chain-of-causation test. Moreover, the psychological condition linking a suicide and an industrial injury under this test may be significantly less severe, clinically, than insanity. Apparently relying on this distorted version of the chain-of-causation test, the appeals officer then imposed a spurious evidentiary requirement on Vredenburg. Specifically, the appeals officer concluded that Vredenburg failed to present  conclusive evidence establishing that [Danny] was devoid of normal judgement and dominated by a disturbance of mind directly caused by his industrial injury as required by the Graver Tank standard. [36] However, nothing in Graver Tank supports the requirement of conclusive evidence. Indeed, under NRS 616C.150(1), so long as the preponderance of the evidence would lead a reasonable mind to conclude that a causal nexus exists, the evidence supporting an appeals officer's decision in Nevada need not be conclusive, and may even be conflicting. [37] For these reasons, the appeals officer clearly erred by misapplying the chain-of-causation test in this case. Similarly, we conclude that substantial evidence does not support the appeals officer's finding of fact that Danny's suicide constituted a deliberate decision on his part, which suggests that the appeals officer concluded that Danny's suicide must have stemmed from a source other than his industrial injury. Notably, the record before the appeals officer contained Dr. Kim's medical evaluations, the medical opinion of Dr. Anderson, and the affidavits of multiple friends and coworkers, which together implicate many of the hallmarks of a compensable suicide under the chain-of-causation test: an irreversible injury, unrelenting pain, a possible psychoactive reaction to prescribed medication, and extreme depression. Although we are restrained from reweighing this evidence on appeal, [38] we discuss it only for contrastive purposes. In contrast to Vredenburg, the Flamingo presented little, if any, evidence to counter the causal narrative displayed by Vredenburg's evidence. The Flamingo failed, for example, to present evidence suggesting that Danny had preexisting health conditionsphysical or mentalwhich could have supported an alternative theory for taking his own life. [39] Since the Flamingo failed to present evidence of this type, the appeals officer's findingwhich suggested that Danny's suicide was attributable to a source other than his industrial injury and its aftermathis unsupported in the record.