Court Opinion

ID: 9719675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:59:14.31343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:08.939543
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
Concurring.
I agree with the majority that the abnormal working conditions requirement should not extend to situations in which a claimant suffers a physical injury, such as a heart attack, as a result of a psychic or mental stimulus arising in the work environment. Indeed, when the General Assembly amended the Workers’ Compensation Act in 1972 to eliminate the requirement of an accident by substituting the substantially broader concept of a work-related injury, it sought, inter alia, to abolish a series of complex doctrines that had required claimants to demonstrate a close association between heart attacks and specific work conditions to support a workers’ compensation award. See generally WCAB (Squillacioti) v. Bernard S. Pincus Co., 479 Pa. 286, 292-95, 388 A.2d 659, 661-63 (1978). Thus, the extension of the abnormal working conditions requirement into this arena has contravened the Legislature’s express purposes in this regard.
That said, I respectfully differ with the majority’s approach to the per curiam Order in Erie Bolt Corp. v. WCAB (Elderkin), 562 Pa. 175, 753 A.2d 1289 (2000), which heralded the undue extension of the abnormal working conditions requirement. The majority appears to consider the Elderkin Order as being in the nature of an unexplained, per cunam disposition that should not have been applied as binding precedent by the Commonwealth Court. See Majority Opinion, at 323 n. 10, 888 A.2d at 732 n. 10. The difficulty with such treatment, however, is that it fails to attach due significance to the fact *325that the Elderkin Order affirmatively furnished the Court’s rationale for the disposition by way of an express citation to Davis v. WCAB (Swarthmore Borough), 561 Pa. 462, 751 A.2d 168 (2000). As the underlying decision of the Commonwealth Court in Elderkin was published, see Erie Bolt Corp. v. WCAB (Elderkin), 777 A.2d 1169 (Pa.Cmwlth.1998), and concerned solely the question of whether the claimant satisfied her burden of proof for a fatal claim petition involving a heart attack that was attributed to work-related stress, this Court’s citation to Davis could only be construed, as it has been by the Commonwealth Court, as extending the abnormal working conditions construct to mental/physical claims involving heart attacks.
In these circumstances, I believe that the Court should expressly recognize that the mistake involved here was ours and not that of the intermediate appellate court. As noted, I fully join the majority’s decision to rectify the error via the central holding in the present case.