Court Opinion

ID: 9541432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:25:22.031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:51.753136
License: Public Domain

KELLEHER, Justice,
with whom BEVI-LACQUA, Chief Justice, joins,
dissenting.
Although my brother Weisberger has addressed the issue presented by the litigants in his usual scholarly fashion, I cannot subscribe to his rejection of Beulah’s petition because the rejection apparently overlooks the purposes of workers’ compensation, ignores past legislative actions as well as judicial pronouncements, and is motivated by an opening-the-floodgates fear that, in my opinion, is groundless.
An overriding objective of workers’ compensation legislation is to impose upon the employer the burden of caring for the casualties occurring in its employment by preventing an employee who has suffered a job-related loss of earning capacity from becoming a public charge. Orthopedic Specialists, Inc. v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., R.I., 388 A.2d 352 (1978); Guilmette v. Humble Oil & Refining Co., 114 R.I. 508, 336 A.2d 553 (1975); Nardolillo v. Big G Supermarket, Inc., 111 R.I. 751, 306 A.2d 844 (1973). Up until today, this court has consistently construed the provisions of the Workers’ Compensation Act liberally so as to effectuate the legislation’s humanitarian goals.
Rhode Island is one of a handful of jurisdictions9 whose compensation statutes do not require that a worker’s injury occur by accident. At its January 1949 session, the General Assembly, with its enactment of P.L. 1949, ch. 2282, removed the necessity of proof of an accidental injury. This change occurred after several individuals who had received on-the-job back injuries were denied compensation benefits because of their inability to show that the injury arose because of some “untoward event” or “unusual or extraordinary conditions.” See, e.g., Morel v. E. Turgeon Construction Co., 76 R.I. 25, 68 A.2d 23 (1949); Parente v. Apponaug Co., 73 R.I. 441, 57 A.2d 168 (1948); and Spolidoro v. United States Rubber Co., 72 R.I. 269, 50 A.2d 773 (1946).
Rhode Island’s compensation act does not distinguish between a physical injury and a mental injury. In the past, we have stressed that even though the term “injury” does not have the same meaning whenever *1353it appears in the compensation act, it usually refers to incapacity for work. Jones v. Grinnell Corp., 117 R.I. 44, 362 A.2d 139 (1976); Parkinson v. Leesona Corp., 115 R.I. 120, 341 A.2d 33 (1975); Ludovici v. American Screw Co., 99 R.I. 747, 210 A.2d 648 (1965). We have continually stressed that compensation is not paid for the injury but for the impairment of earning capacity. Microfin Corp. v. DeLisi, 111 R.I. 703, 306 A.2d 797 (1973); Geigy Chemical Corp. v. Zuckerman, 106 R.I. 534, 261 A.2d 844 (1970); Peloso, Inc. v. Peloso, 103 R.I. 294, 237 A.2d 320 (1968). An employer takes its workers as it finds them, and when the employee aggravates an existing condition and the result is an incapacity for work, the employee is entitled to compensation for such incapacity. Clemm v. Frank Morrow Co., 90 R.I. 37, 153 A.2d 557 (1959).
Here, the commission, in awarding Beulah compensation, believed her psychiatrist when he testified that the office chaos that ensued following her employer’s weekend move from Massachusetts to Rhode Island aggravated a preexisting psychiatric condition. Credibility and fact-finding are part of the commission’s job. However, this award goes for naught because of the concern prompted by Chief Judge Breitel in Wolfe v. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., 36 N.Y.2d 505, 330 N.E.2d 603, 369 N.Y.S.2d 637 (1975), and the imposition by my brother of a standard calling for a “more dramatically stressful stimulus.” With all due deference to my learned associate, this standard represents judicial legislation.
Rhode Island’s compensation act expresses a legislative determination that compensation is to be awarded to an employee who “receives a personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, connected therewith, and referable thereto.” General Laws 1956 (1979 Reenactment) § 28-33-1. The General Assembly does not say that the worker whose earning capacity has been diminished because of a mental injury will receive compensation only in those instances when incapacity is the result of an unusually stressful situation.
I am aware of the concern that claims involving mentally disabled workers will encourage malingering, sham, and outright fraud, but these fears do not justify the denial of a genuine claim. Many assume that mental injuries, because of their very nature,10 are more difficult to substantiate and are, therefore, less genuine than physical injuries, but modern legal and medical theory fails to lend credence to that assumption.
“The separate category reserved for ‘physical’ injuries has little support in psychiatric theory, which regards man as an integrated being. The rule is sometimes rationalized, however, by appeal to administrative considerations. It is contended, for example, that the ‘physical’ injury requirement will guarantee the genuineness of the claim. But use of this rule as a protective device places a heavier burden of proof on those suffering from mental disturbances without any basis for such a distinction. In fact, conscious simulation of the often complex patterns of psychoneurotic reactions may be easier to detect than certain feigned ‘physical’ injuries such as whiplash or back injury. While detection of falsified claims may be made difficult if the testimony of medical witnesses is partial or perjured, this danger seems no less present in cases where there has been a physical impact or injury.” (Footnotes omitted.) Cohen, Workmen's Compensa*1354tion Awards for Psychoneurotic Reactions, 70 Yale L.J. 1129, 1137 (1961).
Intangibles always present problems. However, in heart-attack cases this court has said that it is immaterial whether the work performed by the employee involved unusual physical exertion, rather more important is whether there is a causal relationship between the work and the attack. Williams v. United Wire & Supply Corp., 96 R.I. 487, 194 A.2d 686 (1963). Since the 1949 amendment, there have been many compensation cases involving back strain, and it has never been suggested that the claims should be rejected because the claimant was not subjected to an unusual or excessive stress or that the identified stress would not cause a back strain in the average worker. There is no logical basis for distinguishing between physical and emotional disability.
Recently, in Digby v. Digby, R.I., 388 A.2d 1, 4 (1978), in abolishing the doctrine of interspousal immunity and responding to the claim that the door was being opened to fraud and collusion, we said:
“Our legal system is not so inadequate that the resourcefulness of the judiciary and of the Legislature will be unable to counteract that potential and to respond as instances of fraud and collusion may occur.”
In the same vein, protection against abuse in the award of workers’ compensation lies in the competence and good judgment of the members of the commission, an organization that through the years has performed its duties in an exemplary fashion.
“In the last analysis, the problem of malingering is one of fact, which must be left to the skill and experience of medical and psychiatric experts, and of compensation administrators, who usually manage in time to develop considerable facility in detecting malingerers at the factfinding level.” Larson, Mental and Nervous Injury in Workmen’s Compensation, 23 Vand.L.Rev. 1243, 1259 (1970).
The result reached by the majority will undoubtedly win the plaudits of the state’s editorialists11 and industrialists,12 but the majority’s denial of Beulah Seitz’s claim, I submit, represents a usurpation of the Legislature’s prerogative, an unwarranted intrusion into the area of factfinding which by statute is reserved to the commission, and á disturbing distrust of those who practice within the science of psychiatry.13
I would affirm the commission’s action and respectfully suggest to those who suffer from what might be described as “floodgate” or “Pandora” phobia that relief from such a condition, if required, should be afforded in the legislative chambers at the State House rather than here on the seventh floor of the Providence County Courthouse.

. See Higgs, Sudden, Severe, Emotional Shock That Can Be Traced to a Definite Time, Place, and Cause, and which Produces a Psychological Injury, Is Compensable, 26 Drake L.Rev. 472, 474 n.20 (1976-77). A complete compilation of cases in which courts have considered whether compensation may be awarded for mental disorders allegedly induced by work-related stress is to be found in 97 A.L.R.3d 161 (1980).

. At oral argument, counsel for Beulah’s employer suggested an alternative solution to that provided by the majority. He referred us to Townsend v. Maine Bureau of Public Safety, 404 A.2d 1014 (Me.1979), where the Maine Supreme Court, recognizing the benevolent purposes of compensation legislation, ruled that Maine’s statute, which does not require accidental injury, protects “even the eggshell. * * [E]ven those predisposed to mental injury should be able to recover for ordinary work-related stress to which others would not succumb.” Id. at 1019. For those so predisposed, Maine would require proof of incapacity by clear and convincing evidence. With all due deference to the Maine Supreme Court, I see no necessity for a higher degree of proof. A compensation claim merely involves a civil proceeding in which the soundness of the claimant’s case can be entrusted to the capable hands, eyes, and minds of those who serve on our Workers’ Compensation Commission.

. On May 2, 1981, an editorial appeared in both the Providence Journal and the Evening Bulletin entitled “Workers’ Compensation tie vote should be appealed, overthrown.” Those responsible for the editorial allude to the risk that “[djisgruntled individuals unhappy with their jobs, could have a field day collecting benefits at their employers’ expense while not working due to alleged emotional distress.”

. We acknowledge the amicus brief filed on behalf of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company in which counsel asserts that recovery for Beulah would “tend to provide employees with general health insurance for every minor psychic shock incurred in the course of daily living” and ask that this court “establish stringent, readily ascertainable criteria which place employers on notice of the objective standards they must meet under the Rhode Island workers’ compensation laws.”

. In State v. Correra, R.I., 430 A.2d 1251, 1254 (1981), we recognized “the great advancements made in the psychiatric field” and specifically noted that “[¡judicial reliance upon psychiatric testimony in other areas of the law belies any concern that such evidence is not a sufficiently recognized and acceptable medical science capable of offering quality expert guidance.” This recognition, I might add, was also responsible for our replacing the so-called M’Naghten Rule with the American Law Institute’s standards for determining criminal responsibility. See State v. Johnson, R.I., 399 A.2d 469 (1979).