Court Opinion

ID: 9702093
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:54:11.016931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:33.613260
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully vote a dissent in this case realizing that the elusive statutory interpretation, which we, as Justices of this Court must cope with, is foursquare before us.
A Decision was entered by the trial court on the 5th day of December, 1986. Formal Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law were also entered on the same date by the trial court. Under SDCL 1-26-36, a trial *373court may affirm the decision of an agency or remand the case for further proceedings; a trial court may further reverse or modify the decision if substantial rights of the appellant have been prejudiced; and a trial court is permitted to enter its own findings of fact and conclusions of law or it may affirm the findings and conclusions entered by the agency as part of its judgment. Here, the trial court entered its own findings of fact and conclusions of law, refusing to adopt the agency’s findings and conclusions and did enter, by its formal decision, a reversal. The reversal remanded the case to the Deputy Director of the Division of Labor and Management of the South Dakota Department of Labor for “further proceedings in accordance with this Decision.”
Essentially, the trial court determined that Denis Lather’s mental breakdown arose out of, and in the course of, his employment with Huron College; further, that the mental breakdown was an employment-related injury which was the substantial cause of his attempted suicide and flowing injuries.* With this conclusion, I agree. We are told by the Legislature, via SDCL 2-14-1, that a word in a statute, such as “injury,” “[is] to be understood in [its] ordinary sense.” See Oahe Conservancy Subdist. v. Janklow, 308 N.W.2d 559, 561 (S.D.1981). Thus, the trial court concluded that the hearings examiner made a decision affected by error of law. SDCL 1-26-36(4). Buttressing statutory interpretation and “ordinary sense” with “common sense,” I wish to cite the following:
One of the best general definitions of “injury” was provided in an early Massachusetts opinion:
“In common speech the word ‘injury,’ as applied to a personal injury to a human being, includes whatever lesion or change in any part of the system produces harm or pain or a lessened facility of the natural use of any bodily activity or capability.”
A. Larson, Workers’ Compensation Law: Cases, Materials and Text § 30, at 199 (1984) (emphasis added) (footnote omitted) (quoting In re Burns, 218 Mass. 8, 11, 105 N.E. 601, 603 (1914)). Surely, Lather’s difficulties fall within the above definition of “injury,” approved by the words of Professor Larson, especially when viewed in light of the well-established law of this state, that worker’s compensation laws should be liberally construed to effectuate its purpose. See Meyer v. Roettele, 64 S.D. 36, 40, 264 N.W. 191, 193 (1935). Perforce, the trial court reasoned, Denis Lather was entitled to worker’s compensation benefits for his disability, allegedly $8,921.05 in medical and surgical expenses as of June 1984, and hospital expenses of $45,976.90 as of the same date.
In reviewing this record, it is noted that there appears to be no transcript of testimony transcribed at the circuit court level. However, the circuit court judge did do his duty by reviewing “extensive briefs” and reviewing “all of the files, records, briefs, and depositions herein....” There are seven depositions on file. The circuit court judge could read them just as well as the hearings examiner. Of the seven depositions, six of them were “medical” depositions. One deposition was by the Associate Professor of Physical Education and Wrestling Coach at Huron College. There were approximately eight lay witnesses called before the hearings examiner. In addition, there are four exhibits on file, consisting of letter form, two consultations, and a Division of Criminal Investigation interview. The trial court had to examine some “cold exhibits” and so does this Court. The hearings examiner had the benefit of observation of demeanor and judging credibility of approximately eight lay witnesses.
The majority opinion determines that a work-induced stress related disfunction is not compensable under our worker’s compensation law. A majority of jurisdictions, *374under similar facts, would likely permit Lather to receive compensation. We should not forget that a key factor to compensation awards, in these types of cases, is that the stress from which an employee succumbed is sufficiently greater, intense or more damaging than the stress encountered by most employees engaged in everyday employment life. See IB A. Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 42.23(b), at 7-668 (1987). In this vein, Lather’s position at Huron College involved hyper-stressful situations. Indeed, Denis Lather was subjected to degradation, humiliation, and identifiable stress by personnel of Huron College, to include its President, which caused him to have a mental breakdown. He refused to be dishonest and sign work sheets when athletes would not work and was confronted with three players who were not high school graduates, one a.w.o.l. player, and two academically ineligible players. Lather was told by the president that coaches were a dime a dozen after he wanted a player expelled for pulling a knife on him. In sum, to win at Huron College was elevated over all principles. Lather encountered disciplinary problems because of players staying out late at night drinking intoxicants. Athletic gear was being stolen and he was accountable for the inventory. Lather was caught up in an ugly, depraved situation, not based upon one single incident, but a series of incidents. It was stress beyond the ordinary day-to-day stress to which other employees are similarly exposed. From a loved and successful coach at Redfield High School, he was exposed to a situation at Huron College which inflicted great emotional trauma upon him. Ultimately faced with being taken to our state hospital for the mentally ill, he jumped from a moving car, traveling 55 to 65 miles per hour, inflicting grievous physical injury upon himself. In short, his injuries, both mental and physical, did have a cause-result nexus.
Lather’s depression, emotional trauma, and mental injury arose out of and in the course of his employment with Huron College. Physical injuries from the car-jumping incident also arose out of and in the course of his employment with Huron College because his mental injury and plight was the substantial cause of the attempted suicide.
Huron College is an employer within the definition of SDCL 62-1-2 and Lather is an employee within the definition of SDCL 62-1-3. There is some suggestion that Lather was not a well-balanced, all-around individual; there is suggestion that, perhaps, he was susceptible, inherently, to a nervous breakdown. However, Huron College recruited him, and were extremely aggressive in wooing him away from Redfield High School. Huron College worked upon his dreams to be a college coach. Huron College took Denis Lather, as they found him. So the suggestion of a preexisting condition, does not hold water under the settled law of this state. Harden v. South Dakota Credit Union League, Inc., 87 S.D. 433, 209 N.W.2d 665 (1973). In this connection, I cite Professor Larson’s treatise, supra § 42.23(c), at 7-670-71:
In line with the normal compensation principle that aggravation of a preexisting weakness or disease is a compensable injury, it is clear that the majority rule is not weakened by the fact that the claimant may have had a preexisting neurosis or latent nervous weakness on which the employment acted without physical trauma to produce the ultimate injury. This is the standard rule when a physical trauma precipitates a prior condition, and it should be no less so when the stimulus is nonphysical. There appears to be no reported decision in which compensation was denied in this type of case solely because there was a preexisting neurotic tendency. (Footnotes omitted.)
In this case, the hearings examiner wholly failed to appreciate the coaching situation that Lather was in and tried to wash it away by intimating that Lather “was predisposed to handling stress in coaching situations poorly.” This type of mental block in the mind of the hearings examiner simply distanced any support of Lather’s stressful situation; furthermore, it was a disregard of the law as I have just now written.
*375If, indeed, Lather became deranged, and the Huron College authorities and the Beadle County authorities thought so, he is not responsible for committing an “intentional” tort upon himself. People who suffer from deep depression and despair, who are bereft of their good judgment, should not be held accountable for inflicting intentional torts upon themselves. Surely, this college coach had working conditions far from a normal coaching position in a college in South Dakota. He did not only perceive or imagine that he was being mistreated. He was mistreated. And should he not, on the scales of justice, be compensated for this mistreatment which has caused his work-related injury?
The hearing officer was wrong in holding that Lather’s condition was not a compen-sable injury because the “average person” would not have reacted in the same way. Even if this were the test, and it is not, common sense disputes that conclusion. I would affirm the trial court’s conclusions that Lather’s injuries were compensable under South Dakota’s worker compensation laws.
Finally, Lather should not be denied relief due to a generalized fear of sham, psychologically based worker’s compensation claims. That is not a viable concern in this case where a stress-induced psychological disfunction culminated in Lather’s leap from a moving vehicle. I would uphold the circuit court judge upon this basis: This young coach suffered a mental injury caused by traumatic strain and anxiety which is a “compensable” injury under SDCL 62-1-1(2).

 Contrary to the majority opinion’s declarations, SDCL 62-1-1(2) does not define injury. Instead, that statute discourses on temporal aspects of injury necessary to trigger compensation. See id. When arriving at the intent of the Legislature, we presume that words used in statutes were used to convey their ordinary popular meaning. Oahe Conservancy Subdist. v. Janklow, 308 N.W.2d 559, 561 (S.D.1981).