Court Opinion

ID: 9696044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:34:25.430118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:18.055449
License: Public Domain

Wilkie, J.
(dissenting). The majority correctly conclude that the legislature did not intend to limit an employer’s liability for mental injuries to their employees solely to those instances where these mental injuries are traumatically caused. Indeed, there is no statutory language limiting liability for mental injuries in such a manner.
My quarrel with the majority, therefore, is that they conclude as a matter of law that the mental injury un-traumatically caused here was not the result of an industrial accident within the meaning of the workmen’s compensation law. They conclude the “ ‘fortuitous event, unexpected and unforeseen’ ” must be “out of the ordinary” to permit recovery.
As justification for this restrictive view of when a worker may recover for nontraumatic mental injury, the majority opinion states:
“. . . Without some effective means of evaluating an employee’s claim of mental injury, this court would open the floodgates to numerous fraudulent claims of mental injury.”
The Workmen’s Compensation Act expresses the legislative determination that an employee should be compensated for injury sustained while performing service growing out of and incidental to his employment where *380the accident or disease causing harm arises out of his employment.
I agree with the reviewing court’s statement in its opinion affirming the order of the department which awarded compensation to the applicant in this case:
“. . . The protection against abuse lies in the competence and good judgment of the department’s hearing examiners. Furthermore, the protection of the interests of employees who have suffered mental harm due to an accidental occurrence during the course of employment outweighs the possible harm that may result to employers and insurance carriers as a result of the possibility that some cases of feigned mental harm may be awarded compensation.”
Whether an applicant has indeed suffered an accidental injury arising out of her employment and resulting in mental harm is a question of fact for the department. The appellant in this case did not challenge the findings of the department that the claimant did suffer a mental injury arising out of claimant’s employment and that the applicant was performing services incidental to her employment at the time of the injury. I would affirm the decision of the reviewing court.
The holding of Ver Hagen v. Gibbons1 against recovery for nontraumatically caused mental injury in a negligence action is not involved here since this is a work compensation case where recovery is not based on fault. My views as expressed in the dissent to Ver Hagen still stand. That dissent states that in logic mental injury should be compensable with proof of accompanying physical inj ury.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Chief Justice Hallows joins in this dissenting opinion.

 (1970), 47 Wis. 2d 220, 177 N. W. 2d 83.