Court Opinion

ID: 9700347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:22:53.735545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:07.697758
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Judge,
dissenting.
In this difficult area of compensation law, I find myself once again in disagreement with a finding that there were abnormal working conditions present which caused a claimant’s psychiatric injury, there being no physical trauma or physical injury to serve as a foundation for the claim. The well articulated majority opinion explores all the relevant facts, and the law, but concludes that there were abnormal working conditions. I fail to see what was abnormal about the working conditions present in this case and I harken back to the statement previously written in my concurring and dissenting opinion in Bell Telephone Co. v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (De May), 87 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 558, 487 A.2d 1053 (1985) (Doyle, J., concurring and dissenting), that:
*36By holding that a high stress work environment is and of itself a sufficient work related abnormality the majority creates a dangerous precedent. Many types of jobs are, by their very nature, high stress. Such occupations as that of an air traffic controller, a school teacher in a ghetto area, or a police officer, for example, may well be viewed as high stress; but for their particular positions high stress is normal.
Id., 87 Pa.Cmwlth. at 569, 487 A.2d at 1058 (emphasis in original).
So here, we are considering a high level management position in a national corporation. But the position was only “among the ten largest in the country” (majority op. at 32); there were some districts which are even larger, and, I must assume, more demanding. If the only criterion for workers’ compensation benefits is the ever increasing demands and responsibilities of a higher rung on the corporate ladder, the flood gates will surely open for every aspirant failing to achieve the CEO top rung.
The Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board cited our opinion in Bevilacqua v. Workmen’s Compensation Appeal Board (J. Bevilacqua Sons, Inc.), 82 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 511, 475 A.2d 959 (1984) (Doyle, J., dissenting), where, indeed, we did hold that a claimant, solely on the basis of change in claimant’s duties, suffered a compensable psychiatric injury. The claimant there had worked for fifteen years in the family-owned business as a sheet metal worker under the direct supervision of a foreman. His father and two uncles ran the business, and when his father retired, claimant left his old job and assumed his father’s duties as an estimator and as a supervisor of other employees. As the result of these changes in his duties, the claimant suffered severe depression, severe anxiety, mental confusion, poor concentration and thoughts of suicide; in short, a mental illness unconnected with any physical trauma or physical injury.
What Bevilacqua clearly demonstrates is that a worker who is quite capable of performing highly skilled physical tasks *37under supervision, is not always capable of performing in another, but different, responsible position where he/she must supervise others and where the responsibilities are greater. This is not a criticism of the worker’s abilities, but simply an acknowledgment of an industrial fact. Some persons, of course, handle stress better than others.
Although we did award benefits to the claimant in Bevilacqua, that case was decided six years before Martin v. Ketchum, 523 Pa. 509, 568 A.2d 159 (1990), and I would suggest that Martin overruled Bevilacqua sub silentio, and provided the reference for Justice Zappala when he insightfully wrote in Martin, “[o]ur acceptance of the Commonwealth Court’s analysis should not be construed as approval of the Court’s determinations of compensability in each of its prior cases. Review of the cases reveals decisions that we find incompatible.” Id., 523 Pa. at 519 n. 3, 568 A.2d at 165 n. 3.
The majority quite appropriately notes the concerns of Justice Larsen in his dissent in Martin which adversely commented on this additional burden in a “mental-mental” injury case, this judicial overlay on the Workmen’s Compensation Act which Martin adopted. Yet, Justice Larsen did not write for the majority in Martin, and the General Assembly has had ample opportunity to legislatively correct any erroneous judicial statutory construction since Martin was filed on January 4, 1990.1

. Tliis Court may take judicial notice that The Pennsylvania Workmen's Compensation Act (Act), Act of June 2, 1915, P.L. 736, 77 P.S. §§ 1-1603, was extensively amended by the Act of July 2, 1993, P.L., No. 1993-44.