Missouri's transportation department must pay workers' compensation and future medical treatment costs of an employee who suffered a "work-related mental injury," the state appeals court in St. Louis ruled last week.
Linda Mantia worked more than 20 years for MoDOT, with duties that included "providing traffic control and assistance at motor vehicle accident scenes," the three-judge panel noted at the beginning of a 16-page ruling.
Over the years, those assignments - mainly in the St. Louis area - changed from working accidents several times a week to "only the most serious accidents, which often included fatalities."
She "witnessed the aftermath of a multitude of serious accidents involving catastrophic injury, dismemberment and death," the court reported.
In October 2008, Mantia filed a workers' compensation claim "for the mental injuries and disability she alleged arose out of her work for MoDOT."
At a July 2014 hearing, MoDOT and Mantia each presented expert medical testimony, with both doctors agreeing her depression was work-related, but disagreeing on how much disability it caused.
MoDOT's doctor said Mantia was 2.5 percent disabled, while her doctor found Mantia to be between 90 and 95 percent disabled.
An administrative law judge denied Mantia's claim, ruling she didn't show she had suffered "extraordinary and unusual work-related stress when compared to similarly-situated employees" - that is, other MoDOT workers had experienced the same kinds of horror she did, and she didn't show that her experiences were worse or more unusual than others'.
"There is nothing in the plain language of (state law) to indicate that Mantia's stress must have been extraordinary and unusual compared to her coworkers' stresses," Judge James M. Dowd wrote for the three-judge appeals court panel.
The Missouri Labor and Industrial Relations Commission had overruled the law judge, noting lawmakers in 2005 changed Missouri's legal standards on workers' compensation awards.
Prior to 2005, Dowd noted, state law "required the statute to be construed 'liberally with a view to the public welfare.'"
And that meant, he said, over the years, "several provisions of the Workers' Compensation statute received interpretations by Missouri courts that were not spelled out literally in the plain language of the statute."
But lawmakers changed that policy in 2005, Dowd wrote, instead requiring "that all provisions of the Workers' Compensation statute be construed strictly" - meaning "that the statute can be given no broader application than is warranted by its plain and unambiguous terms."
Since the law states "mental injury resulting from work-related stress" must be "measured by objective standards and actual events," Mantia wasn't required to show how her mental health issues compared with other co-workers in similar working conditions.
The appeals court noted Mantia had reported several examples of her work-related mental injuries, including listening "helplessly to the screams of a child burning to death" after an accident, breathing "air filled with the scent of burning flesh" and witnessing "a woman commit suicide by jumping" from an overpass to the busy Interstate 270 below it.
"Needless to say," Dowd wrote for the court, "witnessing such events placed stresses on Mantia more extreme than most employees ever will experience.
"We cannot reasonably doubt that such experiences were extraordinary and unusual."
MoDOT had argued the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission should not have set Mantia's "permanent partial disability" at 50 percent, because it wasn't supported by the evidence commissioners heard.
But, the appeals court ruled, "It is the special province of the Commission to determine from all the evidence before it the percentage of disability attributable suffered by the claimant."
The judges added the commission "is not bound by the percentage estimates of medical experts," which in Mantia's case, were widely different.
MoDOT also objected to the commission's order that it pay "for any necessary future medical care to treat Mantia's mental injuries."
The appeals court noted neither MoDOT's nor Mantia's expert "opined that she had been cured, (and) Mantia testified that she continued to suffer disabling symptoms."
The court ruled: "The Commission's award of future medical care was supported by sufficient competent and substantial evidence."