Court Opinion

ID: 9573200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:49:33.424358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:56.530029
License: Public Domain

STRINGER, J.
I respectfully dissent because I agree with Justice Anderson that there was adequate evidence to support the findings of the compensation judge that Middleton was not subjected to work-related stress beyond that typically found in a work environment. The WCCA erred in disregarding this finding.
I further dissent because if denying coverage for a suicide unrelated to a compen-sable work-related injury is inconsistent with legislative history, it has been so for almost 20 years since Lockwood v. Independent School Dist. No. 877, 312 N.W.2d 924 (Minn.1981), holding that a disabling mental injury which was a result of job-related mental stress without an accompanying physical trauma was not compensa-ble. Id. at 926. We held so in large part because we were unable to determine whether the legislature intended such an injury to be covered. Id. We stated:
In the absence of proof that the legislature considered the far-reaching ramifications of extending workers’ compensation coverage to employees who are mentally disabled by employment-related stress [without physical trauma], we decline to construe the Workers’ Com*713pensation Act in a manner probably not intended by that body. * * * [T]he issue raised in this case involves a policy determination which we believe should be presented to the legislature as the appropriate policy-making body. If it wishes to extend workers’ compensation coverage to mental disability caused by work-related mental stress without physical trauma, it is free to articulate that intent clearly. In the absence of a clearly expressed legislative intent on the issue, however, we will not hold such disability to be compensable.
Id. at 927. While the majority claims it is leaving Lockwood untouched, it is not, as Lockwood denied workers’ compensation coverage to employees mentally disabled by employment-related stress - precisely the sequence that led to Middleton’s tragic death. The majority’s holding that now awards coverage clearly overrules Lockwood, and takes a step we were unwilling to take in Lockwood because it had “far-reaching ramifications” including, among other concerns, the “major policy determination” of “[rjealocating the costs resulting from stress-related disability between health insurance and worker’s compensation insurance.” Id.
Nothing in our more recent caselaw suggests that a suicide caused by mental illness without an initial work-related physical injury should be held compensable. In Meils by Meils v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 355 N.W.2d 710 (Minn.1984), we stated the general rule that “a subsequent injury which is the direct and natural consequence of a compensable injury is also compensable.” Id. at 714 (emphasis added). The suicide in Meils was thus com-pensable because a compensable physical work-related injury was a contributing cause. Id. at 715.
At the root of our worker’s compensation scheme is the principle that self-inflicted injuries are not compensable. See Minn.Stat. § 176.021, subd. 1 (1998). Although the majority makes much of the legislature’s withdrawal of its explicit denial of compensation for suicides in 1973, we cannot read into this amendment a legislative intent that a suicide caused by a non-compensable mental injury should be treated differently than any less drastic self-induced injury, particularly since the legislature has not amended the relevant language since our 1981 holding in Lockwood denying coverage “[i]n the absence of a clearly expressed legislative intent” for a mental disability caused by workplace stress. Id. at 927. Even the remedial nature of the Workers’ Compensation Act “does not justify a construction which gives to statutory language an application and meaning not intended by the lawmakers.” Gale v. Comm’r of Taxation, 228 Minn. 345, 350, 37 N.W.2d 711, 715, (Minn.1949).
The mental illness which caused Middleton’s suicide clearly fits within Larson’s third category of claims: a mental injury caused by mental stimulus.1 As these injuries have never been compensable in Minnesota, the majority now extending coverage by carving out an exception for suicide not only creates new law, it creates an anomaly where a completed act of suicide is compensable but injuries from an attempted suicide are not. Surely the legislature did not intend such a paradox.
Eliminating the requirement of an initial compensable injury represents a fundamental change in the law and trespasses on what has traditionally been a legislative function. Because Lockwood has been the law for almost 20 years and the legislature has apparently seen no reason to change it, the conclusion is compelling that it did not intend the coverage the majority now extends. I would affirm the decision of the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals denying compensation.

. See 3 Arthur Larson and Lex K. Larson, Larson's Workers' Compensation Law, § 5601 (1999).