AZ Police Officer’s PTSD Claim Fails Since Stress was not Unexpected

In a split decision, an Arizona appellate court affirmed a finding by the state’s Industrial Commission that a police officer failed to establish a compensable workers’ compensation claim based on a post-traumatic mental stress injury because the officer failed to show “unexpected, unusual or extraordinary” stress, as required by the Arizona Workers’ Compensation Act (WCA), A.R.S. § 23-1043.01(B) [Matthews v. Industrial Comm’n of Ariz., 2021 Ariz. App. LEXIS 129 (July 9, 2021)]. The majority of the court also found the officer had failed to show that the provision mandating a heightened burden in mental injury cases was unconstitutional. It also was not convinced by the officer’s argument that in concentrating on the parameters of his training and awareness of the stresses related to being an officer, the Commission had adopted an impermissible assumption of the risk doctrine.

Background

Matthews was hired in 2000, and underwent four months of officer training after he passed pre-employment and psychological examinations. There was evidence that he was provided a two-page acknowledgement that his duties might require him to respond to death scenes and handle body parts, as well as conduct child molestation interviews with victims and be subjected to various other stressful and emotionally charged situations. After serving as a patrol officer for ten years, Matthews was promoted to detective in 2011 and was assigned to the violent crimes unit for six years, then the street crimes unit, until finally joining the domestic violence unit in spring 2018.

In June 2018, Matthews was called to the scene of a barricaded man in the garage of a residence following a domestic violence report. Matthews watched a live video stream of the residence from a command post about a block away as negotiators spoke with the man. After gunshots were heard, officers stationed at the residence breached the garage door, and the man crawled out with a gunshot to the chest. Despite attempts to administer first aid, he died at the scene. Matthews viewed this from the command post and then was assigned to inspect the body and process and photograph the crime scene.

In September 2018, Matthews filed a workers’ compensation claim of injury arising from the incident, based on medically diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Following a hearing, at which an experienced officer testified that officers were routinely exposed to powerful stressors, that it was part of the job, the ALJ issued a finding that the claim was noncompensable since the triggering event was not an unexpected, unusual or extraordinary stress situation.

Two Grounds for Appeal

Matthews appealed, raising two grounds for overturning the ALJ’s determination. First, he argued the ALJ failed to consider the entire record and the evidence in determining that the stress from the June 2018 event was not unexpected, unusual, or extraordinary. Second, he asserted that the workers’ compensation mental injury statute, A.R.S. § 23-1043.01(B), violated Arizona’s state constitution by heightening the legal causation standard with the requirement stress must be “unexpected, unusual or extraordinary” for a compensable mental injury claim.

ALJ Carefully Weighed Evidence

The majority noted that the ALJ had carefully weighed the evidence. It also noted that testimony from the experts for each side, as well as that of Matthews himself, supported the ALJ’s determination that the event in question and the stressors Matthews experienced could reasonably be characterized as neither extraordinary nor unanticipated. Although Matthews’s expert testified that a high-danger incident where an individual was armed acting out violently toward others and barricaded in a structure was rare, he also estimated such incidents occurred two to four times a year, and indicated it was not “atypical” for a domestic violence situation to go bad and end in a self-inflicted death. Because there was evidence that the June incident was not an extraordinary or unanticipated occurrence in the context of domestic violence police work, the majority said it could not say the ALJ erred in so concluding.

Constitutionality of Mental Injury Statute — Assumption of Risk?

Matthews also contended the mental injury statute (§ 23-1043.01) was unconstitutional because it allowed the police department and its insurer to wield an “assumption of the risk” defense against applicants in high-stress occupations, such as police officers who suffer PTSD due to their on-the-job stress. Matthews argued the statute also impermissibly restricted legal causation by requiring unexpected, unusual or extraordinary stress.

The majority noted that the constitutional issues related to § 23-1043.01(B) had been addressed earlier in Findley v. Industrial Comm’n, 135 Ariz. 273, 660 P.2d 874 (Ct. App. 1983), in which the appellate court found the statute consistent with the Arizona Constitution. That decision had been confirmed in Toto v. Industrial Comm’n, 144 Ariz. 508,698 P.2d 753 (Ct. App. 1985).

The majority noted—but disagreed with—Matthew’s argument that the additional requirement that the work-producing stress be unusual, unexpected, or extraordinary permitted the police department to argue that Matthews “knew the job was dangerous when [he] decided to become a police officer,” which amounted to an assumption of the risk doctrine, a doctrine that was antithetical to the WCA. It noted the employer’s counter-argument, that evidence regarding Matthews’s training and job duties was necessary to help the fact-finder understand the various foreseeable events that occurred in the course of Matthews’s employment as a police detective. The majority agreed that establishing the contours of Matthews’s position and its anticipated burdens through his training and experience, as well as the perspectives and opinions of the experts in his field, served to provide an objective lens through which the ALJ could view Matthews’s employment and mental injury.

“Non-accidental” Injuries Are Not Compensable

As to the dissenting opinion of Judge Eckerstrom, the majority indicated that it did not contend that compensable workplace accidents were limited to “unexpected workplace events.” Rather, the term “injury” had to be read in context with its accompanying qualifier: “any accident arising out of and in the course of” employment. The majority indicated it had found no support, textual or otherwise, for the notion that the framers contemplated non-accidental mental injuries as eligible for compensation.