Mental Stress Claims

This paper will discuss the treatment of mental stress claims under Michigan law. The first part of this paper will briefly examine the history of Michigan law in this area up to the enactment of amendments to the Michigan workers' compensation law in the early 1980s by the Michigan legislature. This part will pay particularly close attention to the interpretation of the prior statutory formulation by the Michigan Supreme Court. The second part of the paper will discuss the amendments passed by the Michigan Legislature in an attempt to make Michigan workers' compensation law more conservative. This part of the paper will also look at the response of the Michigan Supreme Court to these amendments and its virtual overruling of the intended effect of these amendments. The last part of the paper will compare the development of workers' compensation law in the rest of the country to that in Michigan. In particular, the workers' compensation law of California will be examined, since California formerly had one of the most liberal laws in this area, along with Michigan.

The Law Prior to the Enactment of 1980 P.A.357

The law concerning the compensation of emotional disabilities under Workers' Compensation has evolved over a period of sixty years. Quite understandably, the earliest focus was upon physical injuries which occurred on the job. Little was known about the effects of stress and compensation for emotional disabilities was

. . .
e intended to eliminate. It said that the Deziel decision allowed a compensable disability to be based upon imagined events and did away with the need to prove a factual causal connection between disability and the employment events. These two elements were essentially destroyed by the Legislature's requirements of actual events and a significant causal connection. The first part of the Deziel test allowed compensable claims to be based upon unfounded perceptions that actual events of employment did occur. This would result in problematic outcomes. For instance, in one of the cases of Deziel, involving the automotive worker in charge of counting defective parts who complained that workers from other shifts were taking parts from his department and installing them on new cars, the Appeals Board refused to grant compensation because a medical description of the complainant's personality indicated that the complained of events were likely imagined. The Supreme Court reversed this decision, saying that had the Appeals Board applied a strictly subjective standard, it would have awarded compensation. The Gardner majority thus realized that the Deziel court had established a precedent that imagined, hallucinatory, or delusional e
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Supreme Court, Justice Brickley, Court Appeals, Appeals Board, Court Court, Court Deziel, Appeals Board's, Insurance Codes, Motors Corporation, II Court, actual events, workers' compensation, mental disability, events employment, actual events employment, appeals board, subjective standard, supreme court, justice brickley, unfounded perceptions, mental disabilities, michigan supreme court, workers' compensation law, mental stress claims, contributed aggravated accelerated,
Approximate Word count = 9301
Approximate Pages = 37 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Mental Stress Claims