Oregon Software Worker Fails to Establish Mental Disorder Claim
Illustrating the substantial barrier that many Oregon claimants contend has been erected via the combination of the state’s “clear and convincing evidence” standard and its “major contributing cause” requirement [see ORS 656.802(2)(a); 656.266(1)], the Court of Appeals of Oregon affirmed an order of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board that in turn had affirmed an ALJ’s order upholding the denial of a mental disorder claim filed by a software validation engineer who contended she had been subjected to enormous stress levels in the workplace [In re Comp. of King v. Gallagher Bassett Ins. Servs., 2021 Ore. App. LEXIS 1681 (Dec. 1, 2021)]. Acknowledging that the worker had established that she faced some stress in the workplace, the court agreed that substantial evidence supported the Board’s determination that she had failed to show employment conditions were the major contributing cause of her condition.
Background
In April 2017, the employer assigned claimant and approximately 40 other employees to work on a project for Intel that involved testing computer hardware at Intel’s work site. The board, in affirming the ALJ, found that the type of work was generally described as fast-paced, hectic, chaotic, and stressful. Employees were divided into teams, with each team being responsible for a group of computers. Claimant was the “point-of-contact” (POC) person for a team, and reported to the lead POC person, her direct supervisor, Dash. Dash reported, in turn, to Miles, the employer’s manager for the project.
Shortly after they began working together, claimant and Dash began to have difficulties. Claimant testified that she began experiencing symptoms of her mental disorder by mid-May 2017. Claimant’s team could not keep up with the work, and employer fell behind on the project. Claimant was admonished several times by Dash and by Miles for, among other issues, poor attendance and a failure to provide timely status reports. By mid-June, conflict between claimant and Dash came to a head. Management at Intel had become dissatisfied with the employer’s progress. Claimant indicated that she was assigned to work on more machines with fewer resources. In a meeting with POC employees, a manager at Intel yelled at claimant. Claimant testified that after that experience, she became fearful, experienced chest pains and weight loss, and felt scattered and panicky. At claimant’s request, she was removed as a POC.
The Comp Claim
After a new POC was appointed for the claimant’s team, claimant began to have conflicts with the new POC. She eventually withdrew from the project and placed herself in a “talent pool” to be assigned to a new project. Six weeks later, the claimant was terminated as part of a staff reduction. She filed a workers’ compensation claim for a mental stress disorder.
Claimant offered, among other things, a medical report and opinion of one of her treating physicians that claimant’s “hostile and abnormal work environment” was the cause of her mental disorder. The doctor weighed as significant causative factors the lack of appropriate workspace, changing and inconsistent direction from management, Dash’s apparent attempts to undermine claimant, and, most of all, claimant’s berating by the manager at Intel. In addition to the doctor’s opinion, claimant offered the testimony of several coworkers, whom the ALJ found credibly testified consistent with claimant’s description of the work environment as chaotic and stressful, and who shared claimant’s perception that Dash did not respect or treat her well.
The employer produced other witnesses, whom the ALJ also found to be credible, who indicated the work environment was stressful, but not as stressful as indicated by the claimant or her witnesses. The employer also offered into evidence claimant’s past medical records, which the board, in affirming the ALJ, found reflected that claimant had been on prescription medication for weight loss since December 2016, before she began working for employer, and that, in the past, before working for employer, claimant had experienced symptoms similar to those leading up to her claim. The issue of the weight loss medication was deemed important by both the Board and the appellate court since the claimant had not advised her treating physician that she was on a weight loss regime (supervised by another physician). The Board considered that in as much as the claimant’s weight loss had been a factor in the diagnosis of her mental disorder, it had not been based upon a complete history.
Excluded vs. Non-Excluded Factors
As noted above, the ALJ found that the claimant had not met her burden of proof in establishing, by clear and convincing evidence, that various non-excluded factors, when compared to excluded factors, were the major contributing cause of claimant’s stress disorder.
In affirming the Board’s decision, the appellate court carefully set out the legal process that the Board had appropriately employed. Rather than consider all of the alleged stressful circumstances in the aggregate to determine whether employment conditions overall were stressful and the claim compensable, the ALJ had separately evaluated each alleged work-related circumstance that the claimant’s doctor had identified as contributing to claimant’s mental stress. In the non-excluded work-related category, the ALJ included the lack of appropriate workspace and the berating of claimant by the manager at Intel. In the excluded work-related category, the ALJ included frustrations with management, which the ALJ found were “generally inherent” in all employments. The ALJ also placed in the excluded work-related category the disciplinary measures imposed on claimant, finding that they were “reasonable corrective action.” The ALJ excluded from the calculus claimant’s allegations about Dash’s behavior toward her—intentional undermining and mistreatment—finding that those allegations had not been established by clear and convincing evidence.
Thus, in the non-excluded category of causative factors, the ALJ placed only the workspace issue and the manager at Intel berating claimant at the meeting of the POCs. The ALJ also evaluated the medical evidence to determine whether it established, by clear and convincing evidence, that the non-excluded factors, when compared to excluded factors, were the major contributing cause of claimant's stress disorder.
Appellate Court’s Decision
The appellate court said the approach by the ALJ and Board were consistent with the law of Oregon. The court stressed:
[P]reliminary to weighing the overall causal contribution of the employment, each alleged stress-inducing circumstance or condition must be evaluated separately to determine whether it falls within an excluded or non-excluded category. Only stressors determined to be non-excluded are weighed against excluded stressors to determine the compensability of the mental stress claim [Opinion, p. 16].
Medical Causation
The court went on to say that the Board had made one error in the equation, but that the error did not require reversal. That was because the Board correctly concluded that the claim failed for lack of proof of medical causation. The court stressed that the only medical evidence offered by claimant in support of her claim was the opinion of her physician. The board identified several shortcomings in the doctor’s opinion that led it to find the opinion unpersuasive. The appellate court said substantial evidence supported that determination.
For example, the doctor included as significant causative factors management’s changing and inconsistent direction and the supervisor’s attempts to undermine claimant, both of which, as the court had earlier noted, the Board correctly excluded. And, because the physician’s opinion was the only medical opinion in the record in support of the compensability of the claim, the court concluded that the board did not err in determining that claimant had not met her burden to prove by clear and convincing evidence that work stress was the major contributing cause of her mental disorder.
Comment
The appellate court did not stress the fact that the claimant seemed to have shielded her treating physician from knowledge that she was on a weight loss regime prescribed by another physician. One is left wondering, however, if this wasn’t also a factor in the Board and the court’s decisions. If a patient presents herself to a physician and the physician notes weight loss over a relatively short time frame, the physician might very well assign that weight loss to stress. I suspect that this was one of the important factors in the Board’s decision that the claimant had failed to show that her workplace was the major contributing cause of her condition.