Legal cases relating to workers’ compensation issues are constantly being decided in the courts throughout the United States. Often, these cases are used to establish precedents that influence similar legal decisions in other parts of the country. Here’s an update on two such cases with implications for the workers’ comp industry decided by supreme courts in New Hampshire and Minnesota.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court in October affirmed a decision by the New Hampshire Compensation Appeals Board (CAB) that awarded workers’ compensation death benefits to the estate of an employee whose injuries on the job resulted in the worker’s subsequent death by suicide. In its appeal, AmGUARD Insurance Group, insurer of Pelmac Industries, Inc., argued that the now-deceased employee’s original June 5, 2018 injury was not a work-related injury and therefore his subsequent death by suicide did not result from the original injury. AmGUARD also argued that its due process rights were violated by the CAB.

According to court records, the decedent worked as an alarm installer and technician for Pelmac. He usually drove directly between his home and work sites. While driving home from work on June 5, 2018, the decedent was involved in a single-vehicle accident when the company van crossed the road, went into the median, and flipped over. As a result of the accident, the decedent sustained serious injuries, including multiple lacerations to his head, a fractured neck, a concussion, a serious tear to his left rotator cuff, and multiple fractured ribs.

The CAB found that the decedent became increasingly distraught, anxious and worried about delays in surgery and treatment for his injuries and the fact that he could not “drive a car or fully care for himself,” nor could he “get back to work and be the person he once was.” Usually a “cheerful, busy and active person,” he became “increasingly inactive,” “emotional, often crying, and morose.” On August 29, he met with a neurosurgeon, expecting to hear that he could finally have his shoulder surgery scheduled. Instead, he was informed that his neck fracture required at least another month to properly heal and at that time the neurosurgeon would re-evaluate whether the decedent’s shoulder surgery could be scheduled. The CAB further found: “This news was devastating to [the decedent] and apparently was the last straw.” Four days after meeting with the neurosurgeon, the decedent died by suicide at his home.

AmGUARD initially accepted and paid the decedent’s workers’ compensation claim that he filed as a result of the motor-vehicle accident. After his suicide, however, the insurance carrier terminated payment of the claim, explaining that the decedent’s death was “not causally related to the work injury and did not arise out of or in the course of employment.”

In upholding the decision of the CAB, the NH Supreme Court ruled that “the chain of causation test” is the proper standard for determining the compensability of a death by suicide under New Hampshire workers’ compensation law. The test permits an award of death benefits when there is an unbroken causal connection between a work-related injury, a disturbance of the mind, and a subsequent suicide.

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You may recall reading our blog from May 2021 about a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that required a construction company to reimburse a former employee for his medical marijuana prescription that he uses to relieve back pain caused by a work injury he sustained while working for the firm two decades ago. We wrote at the time that the ruling put NJ case law into alignment with New Hampshire and New Mexico high court rulings on similar cases, but diverges from opinions reached by high courts in Maine and Massachusetts.

Now Minnesota Supreme Court has weighed in and cites the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which prohibits the possession of cannabis, in reversing a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals that required employers to reimburse injured employees for medical marijuana used as workers’ compensation treatment. In the case of Musta vs. Mendota Heights Dental Center, Minnesota’s high court reviewed similar rulings by other states’ supreme courts and concluded that the federal CSA preempts any state-mandated reimbursement of costs for medical marijuana.

In a summary of the case, the National Council on Compensation Insurance states here that, the Minnesota Supreme Court made note of the fact that, “although Congress has temporarily paused the federal prosecution of marijuana-related crimes, the risk of prosecution still exists because possession of marijuana remains illegal at the federal level. Moreover, the court added, mandating the employer to pay for medical marijuana can make the employer criminally liable for aiding and abetting the possession of marijuana under federal law.”