Printing - FECA-PT2 - National Association of Letter Carriers

. Chain-of-Causation Test.
(1) For a suicide to be compensable under this test, it is not necessary to establish that
the employee's act of suicide occurred immediately or within a short time after the injury,
that the suicide was unpremeditated, violent, occurred in a delirium of frenzy, or that the
employee was genuinely insane, psychotic, or suffered from physical damage to the brain.
Further, whether the employee knew of the purpose and physical consequences of the act
of suicide is irrelevant to the question of causation and, therefore,
"knowledge-of-the-physical- consequences" is not a factor sufficient to break the
chain-of-causation from the injury to the suicide. In discussing the "chain-of-causation"
test, Arthur Larson states:
If the sole motivation controlling the will of the employee when he knowingly decides
to kill himself is the pain and despair caused by the injury, and if the will itself is
deranged and disordered by the consequences of the injury, then it seems wrong to
say that this exercise of will is "independent," or that it breaks the chain of
causation. Rather, it seems to be in the direct line of causation. [Arthur Larson, The
Law of Workmen's Compensation (New York, Matthew Bender, 1979), Volume 1A,
Chapter VI, Section 36.30.]
(2) If the injury and its consequences resulted directly in a mental disturbance, or
physical condition which produced a compulsion to commit suicide, and disabled the
employee from exercising sound discretion or judgment so as to control that compulsion,
then the test is satisfied and the suicide is compensable.
FECA-PT2 Printed: 06/08/2010 192