CASE NO. 32-CRD-4-80Workers’ Compensation Commission
SEPTEMBER 17, 1981
The claimant-appellee was represented by Robert Krzys, Esq., of the staff of the CSEA.
The respondent-appellant was represented by Robert G. Girard, Esq., Assistant Atty. General.
This Petition for Review from the August 12, 1980 Decision of the Commissioner for the Fourth District was argued February 20, 1981 before a Compensation Review Division panel consisting of Commissioners Robin W. Waller, Rhoda Loeb and Gerald Kolinsky.
ROBIN W. WALLER, RHODA LOEB, GERALD KOLINSKY
FINDING AND AWARD AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
1-13 Paragraphs 1 through 13, both inclusive of the Fourth District Commissioner’s August 12, 1980 Decision, are hereby affirmed and incorporated into the Compensation Review Division’s Finding and Award and Conclusions of Law.
14 Paragraph 14 of the Finding and Award are hereby modified as follows: 14 “It is found that the claimant’s activities in moving the patient she was attending, was required by the patient’s mental condition, and that the injury that she suffered was attributable to it. It is therefor found that the claimant suffered an injury on August 12, 1980 while attending an inmate of an institution of facility of mental health.” The final paragraph of the Commissioner’s Finding and Award is hereby affirmed.
OPINION
The parties are in agreement as to the facts surrounding the claimant-appellee’s compensable injury of January 11, 1978. At that time, the claimant, who was a nurse at Fairfield Hills Hospital which is a State institution for the care of geriatric and mentally ill patients, was lifting a 59 year old, 130 pound patient, who was afflicted with Huntington’s Chorea. The patient resisted by lifting his knees and twisting. As a result, the claimant-appellee lost her balance and suffered the compensable fracture to her right ankle.
The respondent-appellant accepted the injury, paid the claimant sixty-six and two thirds percent of her average weekly wage during the time she was totally disabled under Chapter 568 of the General Statutes. The claimant contends that she is entitled to full pay for the time she was disabled pursuant to Section 5-142a C.G.S., claiming that she was “attending” a patient within the meaning of the Statute.
The claimant-appellee contends that the simple dictionary definition of “attending” is to be accorded to the word to mean such things as: looking after, watching over, or taking care of. Any injury experienced while caring for the patient would come under the purview of Section 5-142a. Failing that interpretation she maintains that even if it were to be determined that there must be some causal connection between her injury and the patient mental state, there is ample evidence of the existence of such relationship.
The respondent-appellant denies that the word “attending” means the simple dictionary definition of “caring for”. The legislative intent was to provide extra benefits for hazardous duties and to come within the purview of the statute, the claimant’s injury must emanate from the mental defect in a willful or volitional manner.
As authority, the respondent-appellant cite both the legislative history of the statute, and the only case, an unreported one, Horace Clays v. State of Connecticut No. 25466, New London County, decided by Judge Shannon on September 18, 1958. Basically the decision holds that there must be some causal relationship between the claimant’s injury and the mental condition of the person who was attended by the claimant. However, there are many differences on which the instant case can be distinguished. Unlike the Clays case, there is no stipulation that there was no causal connection between the claimant appellee’s injury and the patient’s mental defect. The claimant appellee contends that she was not only caring for the patient, but that there was a direct causal relationship between her injury and the patient’s mental condition.
The respondents further contend that the Clays decision and legislative history, demonstrate that the essential element of causal connection between the injury and the patient’s mental defect, is an intentional or willful act of the patient. However no such intent can be found in either the decision or in a lite reading of the statute or review of the legislative history of the Act.
There have been numerous amendments since the original was enacted in 1939. They have all concerned reclassification or addition of classes of employees entitled to its benefits. At no time has either the Legislature or the Courts, with the exception of the Clays decision, addressed the meaning of the word “attending.” A literal reading of the statute and its amendments reveals no language requiring that a claimant’s injury be caused by the willful or volitional act of a mentally defective patient. At the same time, a reading of the Clays decision reveals no requirement that there must be some volitional or willful act of the patient which forms the basis of the claimant’s injury. That whole contention is really highly suspect when the question is posed, “is a mentally defective person capable of committing an intentional act within the legal sense?” Insanity or mental defect is commonly raised as a defense to criminal acts requiring mens rea, as well as intentional torts.
There is evidence, both in the form of testimony of the claimant, a nurse, and her co-worker, of the patient’s mental condition. Furthermore, we may draw certain inferences as to the patients’s mental defect by virtue of the fact that he was confined as a patient to an institution for those afflicted with a mental disease or defect. Therefor, there was ample evidence from which the Commissioner could form an opinion as to the patient’s state of mind.
For these reasons, we conclude that the Commissioner did not err in finding that the claimant-appellee was injured while “attending” a patient within the meaning of Sec. 5-142a C.G.S., and that she is entitled to full pay under the provision of that statute. Because of the evidence and the meaning clearly accorded to the word “attending” we find it unnecessary to conclude that the claimant was assaulted as found by the Commissioner below, since she was clearly “attending” within the meaning of the statute. Therefor, the Commissioner’s Finding and Award is affirmed to the extent that he found that the claimant-appellee was “attending,” and is entitled to full pay pursuant to Sec. 5-142a C.G.S., and it is modified to the extent that it is unnecessary to find that the acts of the patient constituted an assault upon the claimant-appellee.