N.J. Court Rules on Workers’ Comp Occupational Stress Claim

A New Jersey court struck down recently a claim by a former bank employee who sought workers’ comp disability benefits for what the claimant described as a psychological illness caused by occupational stress.

The court stated that in order to establish a compensable psychiatric claim, the petitioner must prove that the disability resulted materially from “objectively verified” job-related stress. But the court said the petitioner did not offer such proof as required.

The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, ruled on the case on June 26, affirming the workers’ comp judge’s earlier written opinion.

According to court documents, the petitioner, Jeanne Knight, was hired in 1990 as a teller by Audubon Savings Bank in New Jersey, and was promoted in 1999 to her final position as a mortgage processor. But the petitioner said her supervisor repeatedly screamed at her, imposed an excessively burdensome workload, and made her job so stressful that it resulted in a compensable psychiatric claim.

She had received several annual written performance evaluations completed by the supervisor, which she characterized as negative, both during her testimony and when interviewed by the expert witnesses. However, the evaluations that the bank submitted to court as evidence ranged mostly from “good” to “very good” categories.

Knight said she decided to leave her N.J. Court Rules on Workers’ Comp Occupational Stress Claim employment in February 2010 after what she described as a negative 2009 review. On her last day of work, she left the office saying there were problems with her mother’s hospice care.

Knight filed for disability benefits but she denied that she separated from her employment because of her mother’s grave condition, claiming she left because of the psychiatric stress caused by the supervisor’s ill treatment of her. The petitioner presented three witnesses in support of this position.

But witnesses offered varying accounts of what may have taken place at the workplace. They agreed that the petitioner and the supervisor didn’t get along.

But the witnesses couldn’t corroborate the petitioner’s claim, noting that they didn’t actually see the petitioner getting yelled at — even though one witness admitted he himself had been yelled at by the supervisor. The employer’s witnesses disputed much of the petitioner’s testimony.

The petitioner’s physician had prescribed anti-anxiety medications for petitioner’s job-related anxiety. In 2010, a psychiatrist described the petitioner’s psychiatric disabilities as including adjustment disorder with mixed anxious/ depressive features.

In sum, the court ruled, there was not enough evidence upon which the court can find that it was “objectively verified work stressors” that “materially caused” or were “to a material degree a contributing factor” in the petitioner’s psychiatric reaction.