Appeals court rules cop suicide not compensable

A workers compensation administrative judge’s determination that a police officer’s 2013 suicide following years of mental ailments that included depression and anxiety was not compensable must stand, according to a ruling by the Connecticut Appellate Court in an opinion slated for release Tuesday.

As documented in AC47085, the officer had worked for the Town of East Hartford since 1989, responding to several harrowing events, including murder suicides and a stabbing in which the teenage victim died in his arms. In March 2013, two months after he responded to a fire in which he inhaled smoke, he committed suicide, writing in a note that he had suffered from mental ailments for years. His medical history included issues going back to his childhood, according to testimony.

In November 2013, the man’s widow filed for survivor benefits, listing the date of injury as the day he died, with the description of the injury as a ‘‘(g)unshot wound.’’ Two years later, she filed another form describing the injury as post-traumatic stress disorder, with the date of injury listed as the day he responded to the fire.

An administrative law judge heard the case, which included evidence from medical professionals, dismissed a workers compensation claim for death benefits, ruling that evidence showed “decedent suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder was credible but ‘the weight of the medical evidence does not support the contention that the (his PTSD) arose from, or was caused by, any physical injury that he sustained as a police officer,’” which was a requirement under Connecticut state law in 2013: that a physical injury cause the mental injury.

Lawmakers in 2019 passed a law that now allows first responders to file for workers compensation benefits for mental injuries that are not connected to a physical injury under specific circumstances.

The judge also wrote that evidence that the officer ‘‘did not suffer a physical injury on January 15, 2013, that aggravated his underlying mental health condition which then caused him to take his own life’’ was “credible and persuasive.”

A Compensation Review Board heard the case on appeal, “improperly” substituting “its own factual findings for those of the administrative law judge,” which the appeals court ruled “were not clearly erroneous and which found support in the record.” The appeals court wrote that “it was not the role of the board to retry the issue of causation.”