Opinion ID: 2570165
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The voluntary willful choice test

Text: The more restrictive, minority test governing the compensability of suicides originated with the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, In re Sponatski, [9] and contains two basic prongs. Under this voluntary willful choice test, a suicide is compensable only if it (1) resulted from an uncontrollable impulse or delirium of frenzy, and (2) occurred without the employee's knowledge of the physical consequences of his or her actions. [10] While the first prong of this test addresses an employee's volition, the second prong relates to an employee's understanding. [11] If either prong is not met, the suicide acts as an independent intervening cause severing the relationship between the employee's death and the industrial injury. [12] For the reasons discussed below, however, both prongs are problematic in the modern workers' compensation context and have been modified or abandoned in recent years as jurisdictions have gradually converged on some version of the chain-of-causation test. Because the first prong of the voluntary willful choice test requires a complete absence of volition, courts applying this test traditionally were certain about compensating only suicides whose spontaneity and violence demonstrated that the employee was afflicted with a psychological condition approximating insanity at the time the suicidal act was performed. [13] However, by relying on spontaneity and the method of self-destruction as aids in determining volition, this test excludes suicides that might otherwise be causally connected to an industrial injury simply because the method used was undramatic or because the two events were separated by a significant period of time. In addition to recognizing the first prong's underinclusiveness, we also note the common criticism of this test's second prong. Specifically, by requiring a claimant to demonstrate that an employee did not understand the consequences of the suicidal act, the second prong imports an overly restrictive criminal law standard of insanity into a remedial context. [14] Since, however, concepts of fault are alien to workers' compensation laws, [15] the only legal issue in suicide compensation cases is causation. Whether an employee understood the consequences of committing suicide is irrelevant to whether the act was caused by an original industrial injury. Based on these and other concerns, the voluntary willful choice test has been either modified or abandoned by a majority of states that have considered the compensability of suicides under their respective willful self-injury exclusions. [16] In states where the test has been modified, the first prong is relaxed and the second prong is practically eliminated. [17] By eliminating the second prong, and relaxing the first, these states adhere to the functional equivalent of the chain-of-causation test. Joining this trend, we reject the voluntary willful choice test and instead embrace the chain-of-causation test set forth below.