Court Opinion

ID: 9740356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:33:11.151098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:17.616078
License: Public Domain

MacLaughlin, Justice
(dissenting).
I believe that the 1967 amendment to Minn. St. 176.021, subd. 1, stating that “suicides are not compensable,” denies plaintiff the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and should be declared by this court to be unconstitutional.
The perplexing problem of work-related suicides has led to *365the adoption of varying rules for recovery in other jurisdictions. See, e.g., Scanlon, Suicide under Workmen’s Compensation Laws, 12 Clev.-Mar. L. Rev. 26; Note, The Minnesota Workmen’s Compensation Act: Recent Interpretations, 46 Minn. L. Rev. 199, 204; 1A Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, § 36 ff.; Annotation, Suicide as Compensable under Workmen’s Compensation Act, 15 A. L. R. 3d 616. These rules demonstrate differing judicial responses to the problems of proof in demonstrating the causal link between a work-related injury and death by suicide.1 As cited in the majority opinion, the United States Supreme Court in Weber v. Aetna Cas. & Surety Co. 406 U. S. 164, 174, 92 S. Ct. 1400, 1406, 31 L. ed. 2d 768, 778 (1972), has stated that—
“* * * the States have frequently drawn arbitrary lines in workmen’s compensation and wrongful-death statutes to facilitate potentially difficult problems of proof. Nothing in our decision would impose on state court systems a greater burden in this regard.”
However, in its 1967 amendment to § 176.021, subd. 1, the legislature went far beyond attempting “to facilitate potentially difficult problems of proof.” Rather, the legislature apparently sought to resolve the problems of proof by excluding all suicides from the coverage of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Neither *366party has called to our attention, nor does our research disclose, any other state which has a similar provision in its workmen’s compensation act.
1 believe that the absolute prohibition against compensation for suicides is unconstitutional under the standards enunciated by the majority. I also believe the renewed vigor given by the United States Supreme Court to “traditional” equal-protection review compels a stricter review of nonsuspect classifications and nonfundamental interests than has been granted in the past. In the 1971 term, there were at least four cases2 in which the United States Supreme Court struck down legislation on equal-protection grounds while explicitly applying the “traditional” or “restrained” level of review which had previously been considered “virtual judicial abdication.” 3 Professor Gerald Gunther commented as follows about the trend indicated by these recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court (Gunther, The Supreme Court, 1971 Term, Foreword: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection, 86 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 20):
“* * * Judicial deference to a broad range of conceivable legislative purposes and to imaginable facts that might justify classifications is strikingly diminished. Judicial tolerance of *367overinclusive and underinclusive classifications is notably reduced. Legislative leeway for unexplained pragmatic experimentations is substantially narrowed.” (Italics supplied.)
The case of Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 92 S. Ct. 251, 30 L. ed. 2d 225 (1971), is a good example of the renewed power given traditional equal-protection review. That case dealt with an Idaho probate statute which provided that where several persons are equally qualified to administer an estate, the appointing court must prefer males over females. The court did not treat classifications on the basis of sex to be “suspect,” but stated the relevant test under restrained review (404 U. S. 75, 92 S. Ct. 253, 30 L. ed. 2d 229):
“* * * [T]his Court has consistently recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment does not deny to States the power to treat different classes of persons in different ways. [Citations omitted.] The Equal Protection Clause of that amendment does, however, deny to States the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute. A classification ‘must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.’ ” (Italics supplied.)
In upholding the statute below, the Idaho Supreme Court had pointed out its value as eliminating one area of controversy which would otherwise require a hearing as to which of two or more petitioners was better qualified to administer the estate. Reed v. Reed, 93 Idaho 511, 465 P. 2d 635 (1970). It also found the classification was not arbitrary because the legislature “evidently concluded that in general men are better qualified to act as an administrator than are women.” 93 Idaho 514, 465 P. 2d 638. Although the court recognized that there are exceptions to this generalization, it did not find the classification “so com*368pletely without a basis in fact as to be irrational and arbitrary.” Id.
The Supreme Court summarily swept away these purported justifications (404 U. S. 76, 92 S. Ct. 254, 30 L. ed. 2d 230):
“Clearly the objective of reducing the workload on probate courts by eliminating one class of contests is not without some legitimacy. The crucial question, however, is whether § 15-314 advances that objective in a manner consistent with the command of the Equal Protection Clause. We hold that it does not. To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.”
This analysis is applicable to the statute before us. The legislature apparently felt that the problems of proof and the need for a hearing in workmen’s compensation cases involving suicide placed an unnecessary burden on the employer. Yet, the petitioner, a widow whose husband’s suicide was explicitly found to have arisen out of and in the course of employment, is in precisely the same position as others whose spouses have died from work-related injuries. I do not believe it is a reasonable classification, or that it furthers a legitimate state interest, to deny benefits to the widow and children of a workman whose death is caused by suicide arising as a direct result of a work-related injury while allowing those benefits to the widow and children of a workman whose death is caused by, for example, an infectious disease arising as a direct result of a work-related injury.4 *369If, following Reed, we refuse to accept classifications which are based solely on legislative generalizations intended to ease administrative burdens, we must find another justification for the statute in order to uphold its constitutionality. I can find no such justification.
The legislature could properly have sought to directly confront the difficulty of proof which evidently was the motivation behind the 1967 amendment. However, in my judgment, it could not constitutionally bar all recovery simply to avoid those problems.
As stated by Mr. Justice Jackson in a concurring opinion in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106, 112, 69 S. Ct. 463, 466, 93 L. ed. 533, 540 (1949):
“Invocation of the equal protection clause * * * does not disable any governmental body from dealing with the subject at hand. It merely means that the prohibition or regulation must have a broader impact. I regard it as a salutary doctrine that cities, states and the Federal Government must exercise their power so as not to discriminate between their inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of regulation.”
I would reverse the commission and grant recovery of benefits where, as here, the suicide arose out of and in the course of the employment and was a direct and proximate result of the employee’s personal injury.

 See, e.g., Mercer v. Department of Labor & Industries, 74 Wash. 2d 96, 442 P. 2d 1000 (1968) (death compensable only if decedent acted under an uncontrollable impulse or while in delirium); Matter of Franzoni v. Loew’s Theatre & Realty Corp. 22 App. Div. 2d 741, 253 N. Y. S. 2d 505 (1964); Id. 25 App. Div. 2d 453, 265 N. Y. S. 2d 751, appeal denied, 17 N. Y. 2d 666, 269 N. Y. S. 2d 444, 216 N. E. 2d 605 (death compensable when caused by brain derangement or psychosis rather than “mere” depression); Petty v. Associated Transport, Inc. 276 N. C. 417, 173 S. E. 2d 321 (1970) (death compensable if “chain of causation” such that the deprivation of normal judgment which leads to suicide is result of compensable accident).

 James v. Strange, 407 U. S. 128, 92 S. Ct. 2027, 32 L. ed. 2d 600 (1972); Weber v. Aetna Cas. & Surety Co. 406 U. S. 164, 92 S. Ct. 1400, 31 L. ed. 2d 768 (1972); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, 92 S. Ct. 1029, 31 L. ed. 2d 349 (1972); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 92 S. Ct. 251, 30 L. ed. 2d 225 (1971). Professor Gerald Gunther concluded that a total of seven cases used the traditional minimal-scrutiny equal protection standard to strike down legislation, citing, in addition to the above cases, Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U. S. 715, 92 S. Ct. 1845, 32 L. ed. 2d 435 (1972); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645, 92 S. Ct. 1208, 31 L. ed. 2d 551 (1972); Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U. S. 504, 92 S. Ct. 1048, 31 L. ed. 2d 394 (1972). Gunther, The Supreme Court, 1971 Term, Foreward: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection, 86 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 18, and note 88.

 Gunther, footnote 2, supra, p. 19.

 The employer and insurer have not sought review of the determination that the suicide arose out of and in the course of the employment and was a direct and proximate result of the employee’s personal injury of September 12,1966.