Opinion ID: 1542320
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: McEvily to Dailey to Spartin.

Text: Our review of D.C. case law involving the application of an objective test to psychological disability claims begins with McEvily v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 500 A.2d 1022 (D.C. 1985). In McEvily, the claimant served as head of WMATA's employee benefits branch. Despite initially having a positive work experience, claimant began to experience frustration as a result of managerial changes in the personnel department. Id. at 1022. Although McEvily's new supervisor did not criticize or embarrass him, he grew frustrated over her inattentiveness and her failure to act on or approve his proposals. Id. at 1022-23. Believing that it was necessary for his mental health to give up his job, petitioner stopped working on December 1, 1982. Id. at 1023. Subsequently, he filed a workers' compensation claim for a psychiatric disability (depressive reaction). Id. At the hearing, he testified on his own behalf; meanwhile, WMATA called a board-certified psychiatrist, who testified based on an independent medical examination that (1) McEvily suffered from a cyclothymic disorder and a narcissistic personality disorder, but that (2) both disorders pre-existed his employment with WMATA. Id. Therefore, the doctor opined that there was no connection between his work situation and his predisposition to the illness which he experienced. Id. According to the court, Dr. Schulman could not find any incident, experience, or ongoing occurrence that represented a significant stressor that would have affected anyone who was not so predisposed. He concluded that there could be no reasonable assessment of job-related stress, because the nature of that stress was highly subjective to petitioner. Id. The examiner denied his claim, finding that the depression did not arise out of the employment. Id. The Director affirmed, concluding that petitioner's evidence did not give a `rationalized account of the causal relationship between the depression and [petitioner's] work. Id. Based on its review of the record, this court affirmed, find[ing] substantial evidence to support the conclusion that petitioner did not suffer a compensable injury under the Act. Id. at 1024. Notably, this court affirmed on substantial evidence grounds (in a case where the claimant did not produce medical evidence himself). The court did not enunciate an objective test, but rather held that the employer's expert's opinion that there was no work-related connection supported the examiner's conclusion that the depression was not connected to the employment. Drawing partly on McEvily, the Director set forth the objective test in Dailey v. 3M Co. & Northwest Nat'l Ins. Co., H & AS No. 85-259 (May 19, 1988). Dailey was a secretary who worked in Indianapolis but accepted relocation to Washington, D.C. in lieu of the termination of her position. Id. at . However, after relocation, she began to suffer from depression and an ulcer; she then stopped working and returned to her family in Indiana. Id. at -2. After the hearing examiner denied her claimfinding that her depression did not arise out of her employmentshe appealed to the Director, claiming that her predisposition to a depressive condition should not bar her eligibility for benefits when work-related events aggravated her pre-existing condition. Id. at -3. The hearing examiner noted the testimony of the claimant's psychiatrist that the claimant was intact prior to her move as well as his conclusion that her condition was caused by her work, but further noted the doctor's opinion that the claimant suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and a significant inability to deal with life's difficulties. Id. at -4. Based on this information, the examiner conclude[d] . . . that, had claimant not been otherwise so predisposed, the changes in her job situation would not have affected claimant in the manner in which they did [13] . . . . Furthermore, [the examiner did] not find those changes occurring in claimant's life unusual or uncommon to the workplace. Id. at . The examiner also noted that other life events affected claimant as well. Id. On administrative appeal, the Director reviewed case law from the Agency and D.C. regarding claims of mental disabilities arising from employment. The Director cited McEvily and interpreted this court's McEvily decision as holding that for persons having a significant predisposition to a particular emotional injury, there must be some type of incident, experience, or occurrence at work which could have affected someone who was not significantly predisposed to that type of injury. Id. at  (citing McEvily, supra, 500 A.2d at 1023). The Director then examined the Agency's prior decision in Chaney v. Southeastern Univ., H & AS No. 84-350 (Apr. 6, 1986) as it was summarized by the Director's decision in Wenzel v. British Airways: The Chaney decision held that, at the very least, the concept of arising out of the employment requires a showing that there were obligations placed on employee or conditions under which the employee performed which exposed him to risks or dangers which could have [led] to the kind of psychological injury actually suffered. . . . Thus, to support the ultimate finding that a psychological injury arises out of the employment there must be a finding, supported by the evidence, that within the conditions of the workplace there was a specific, articulable source of injury in the workplace and a finding, supported by medical evidence, that the alleged source of the injury could have produced the kind of injury the employee suffered. . . . In requiring more than a showing that an employee had a medically harmful, psychologically adverse reaction to the work environment, Chaney emphasized that it is the employment, and not the make-up of the employee, which must account for the source of the employee's stress. If there is nothing discernible in the employment which for articulable reasons would ordinarily account for the employee's severe reaction, then the employee's injury does not arise out of the employment. Thus, inasmuch as Chaney directs attention to the work environment, and not to the employee's perception of his work environment, a factfinder has an objective basis on which to make his findings. Id. at -7 (quoting Wenzel v. British Airways, H & AS No. 84-308,  -7 (Oct. 6, 1985)) (emphasis added). In Chaney, therefore, the Director had established an objective test requiring the claimant to proffer evidence of a specific, articulable source of injurythat is, something tangible about the work environment rather than relying on the claimant's purely subjective perceptions or on the mere evidence that an adverse reaction occurred. However, the Director then read McEvily and Chaney/Wenzel together to require a different test. The Director's understanding of McEvily (as noted above) is quite similar to the Director's view of Chaney/Wenzel; however, McEvily involved someone pre-disposed to psychological injury. The Director combined the interpretation of McEvily, that a claimant pre-disposed to injury must offer evidence of some type of incident, experience, or occurrence at work which could have affected someone who was not significantly predisposed to that type of injury, with its requirement of a specific, articulable source of injury from Chaney/Wenzel to produce the test we now refer to as the Dailey test: [T]he Director now specifically holds, that in order for a claimant to establish that an emotional injury arises out of the mental stress or mental stimulus of employment, the claimant must show that actual conditions of employment, as determined by an objective standard and not merely the claimant's subjective perception of his working conditions, were the cause of his emotional injury. The objective standard is satisfied where the claimant shows that the actual working conditions could have caused similar emotional injury in a person who was not significantly predisposed to such injury. Dailey, supra, at -8. This test shifted the focus from an objective examination of the workplace environment to an examination of both the environment and the employee. [14] This had the added effect of erecting a stricter barrier for those claimants who had previously suffered from psychological conditionsbecause these claimants could no longer point to themselves as examples, the focus necessarily shifted to a hypothetical, average third person. This court confronted the Dailey test in Spartin v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Servs., 584 A.2d 564 (D.C. 1990), a case involving another mental-mental claim. The petitioner in Spartin had been the president of a large human resources consulting firm. Id. at 565. Although he had to work hard, he viewed his job as fun and exciting until a larger London based firm bought out his company, made him Chairman of the Board of an international recruiting company, and assigned him numerous new responsibilities on top of his already substantial job. Id. at 565-66. Eventually, petitioner sought medical care for what he thought was a heart attack; his physician, however, diagnosed him as suffering from depression-related disorders and referred him for psychiatric and psychological care. Id. at 566. After being diagnosed with serious depression, he quit working and filed a workers' compensation claim. Id. His employer offered the testimony of a psychiatrist who opined that claimant suffered from depression and dementia, but that those conditions were not attributable to his jobapparently suggesting that the dementia was related to some type of metabolic disturbance and the depression to his experience of chest pain. Id. at 567-68. The hearing examiner credited the employer's psychiatrist and concluded that petitioner had not met his burden of demonstrating that the actual conditions of employment, as determined by an objective standard and not merely the petitioner's subjective perception of his working condition, caused the emotional injury. Id. at 568. On review by this court, the petitioner challenged the application of the Dailey test. Id. This court noted that [a]lthough the general rule of causation in workers' compensation cases is to be liberally construed . . . the Director has crafted special standards for certain types of claimed injuries, and that Dailey was such a test. Id. (internal quotations and citation omitted). According to the court, Viewed generally, insofar as it requires an objective demonstration of job stressors, Dailey fits within the modern trend to compensate workers for emotional injury caused by job stress. . . . Professor Larson advocates an objective standard for such cases that is very similar to the Dailey test: in order for non-traumatically caused mental injury to be compensable in a workmen's compensation case, the injury must have resulted from a situation of greater dimensions than the day-to-day mental stress and tensions which all employees must experience. Id. at 569 (quoting 1B A. LARSON, WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION LAW § 42.23(b) (1987)) (internal citation and footnote omitted). This comparison between Dailey and LARSON'S view of the modern trend reveals two important points: (1) they relate to compensation for emotional injury caused by job stress, and (2) the objective test examines the conditions of the workplace environment. The court went on, however, to state that neither the hearing examiner nor the Director had properly applied Dailey, explaining, The Dailey test is objective: it focuses on whether the stresses of the job were so great that they could have caused harm to an average worker. As the Director explained in Dailey, job stresses are to be measured against the usual stressors or mental stimuli of employment in general. . . . Thus, a claimant must show under the Dailey test that his current job conditions are unusually stressful as compared to employment conditions in general, not as compared to his work history. Spartin, supra, 584 A.2d at 569 (internal citation omitted). The court then noted that the Director in Dailey acknowledged that `a work related aggravation of a pre-existing condition can be compensable under the law of workers' compensation. Id. at 570 (quoting Dailey, supra, at 9). [15] The court then opined, [a]lthough recovery for aggravation of a preexisting condition may seem incompatible with the Dailey test's focus on a hypothetical employee who is not predisposed to injury, we do not read Dailey to preclude recovery where a claimant comes to the job with a preexisting psychological condition. Under Dailey, an employee predisposed to psychic injury could recover if he is exposed to work conditions so stressful that a normal employee might have suffered similar injury. Thus, an employee with a predisposition to mental illness is not precluded from recovering under Dailey. Only when so interpreted is the Dailey standard compatible with the Workers' Compensation Act. Id. (emphasis added). As interpreted by Spartin, therefore, the Dailey test was intended to preserve the right of persons predisposed to mental injury to recover in some cases, but only where a normal person might have suffered similar injury. In succeeding decisions, the Dailey rule has continued to be applied in a way that forecloses compensation unless a normal or average employee would experience similar injury. This review demonstrates that the court's development of the objective standard occurred wholly within the context of mental-mental claims; indeed, entirely within mental-mental claims involving non-traumatic or gradual stress. It is clear that the Director and this court have acknowledged the difficulty inherent in evaluating claims of psychological disability and have attempted to address the problem by imposing a measure of objectivity: [C]laims of work related emotional injury are among the most difficult to handle and adjudicate. While in theory work related mental injuries are as compensable as work related physical injuries, the adjudication of mental injury claims clearly presents more difficult problems. Mental injury claims are more difficult because of the inherent difficulties of objectively determining the existence of an injury and its source. Dailey, supra, at 15. However, as noted, the test shifted over time from an objective examination of the employee's workplace environment to one that examined both the environment and the employee's particular susceptibilities. If an employee was predisposed to injury, then that employee would have to point to a hypothetical third person. It is within this admittedly unsettled context that the court expanded the application of the objective test to physical-mental claims.