Court Opinion

ID: 9680623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:35:20.929048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:29.715191
License: Public Domain

COOPER, Justice,
dissenting.
“Injury” means any work-related traumatic event or series of traumatic events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment which is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism evidenced by objective medical findings.... “Injury” when used generally ... shall not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of a physical injury.
KRS 342.0011(1) [1996 Ky. Acts (Ex.Sess.), ch. 1, § 1] (emphasis added). Thus, all harmful changes “proximately caused” by a work-related injury are compensable, except that a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related condition is compensable only if it is a “direct result of a physical injury.” Since the legislature used the terms “proximate cause” and “direct result” in the same statute to define two different results, it is reasonable to assume that the terms were intended to mean two different things. Remarkably, the majority of this Court concludes that, as used in this statute, “direct result” and “proximate cause” mean the same thing. If so, it would have been a simple matter for the legislature to have said, in the exclusionary portion of the statute, that the definition of “[ijnjury ... shall not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is proximately caused by a physical injury.”
The distinction between a “proximate cause” and a “direct cause” has often been recognized in our jurisprudence, usually in the context of a claim that a particular result was caused, as here, by an independent, intervening cause.
To constitute a “proximate cause” of an injury, the negligence complained of need not be the direct or immediate cause, but it must do more, unless the injurious result is foreseeable, than merely furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible. If it is not the immediate or direct cause but requires the intervention of an immediate or direct cause to bring about the result, it is regarded as a “concurring proximate cause” imposing liability upon those responsible for it only when the intervention of the immediate cause and the resulting injury could or should have been foreseen in the light of the circumstances.
Dixon v. Kentucky Util. Co., 295 Ky. 32, 174 S.W.2d 19, 21 (1943) (emphasis added). Thus, a direct (immediate) cause will al*464ways be a proximate cause of injury, but a proximate cause need not be the direct (immediate) cause of injury. By specifically excluding compensation for psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related harmful changes unless they are the “direct result” of a work-related injury, the legislature obviously intended to exclude them from the broader coverage encompassed within the concept of “proximate cause,” and, thereby, render so-called “compensation neurosis” claims noncompensable under the Kentucky Workers’ Compensation Act. While Coleman’s work-related injury may have been a proximate cause of his neurosis (absent the injury, he would not have been entitled to any compensation), it is uncontested that the direct cause of his neurosis was not the injury, but the insurance company’s refusal to pay for certain specialized treatment prescribed by his family physician, Dr. Larry Coleman.
Accordingly, I dissent.
GRAVES, J., joins this dissenting opinion.