Court: Family can collect workers’ comp after some suicides

By Cy Ryan

Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 3:28 p.m.

CARSON CITY – Surviving family members may collect workers' compensation death benefits if an injured employee commits suicide as a result of an on-the-job injury.

That was the ruling of the Nevada Supreme Court in the case of Danny Vredenburg, a bartender who was injured when he slipped and fell down a flight of stairs at the Flamingo Hilton-Laughlin in Clark County.

After his injury, Vredenburg continued to suffer intense pain despite surgeries and pain-killing medication. He was unable to eat, lost weight and suffered unrelenting pain when he tried to walk. And he became despondent.

He eventually shot himself in the head.

His widow, Sharon Vredenburg, filed a claim for death benefits from the Flamingo Hilton-Laughlin on the grounds Danny was in so much pain from his industrial injury that he took his own life.

The claim was denied by the Hilton and an appeals officer. The law provides compensation for on-the-job deaths. And it precludes the survivors from recovering compensation if the employee had a “willful intention to injure himself.”

But the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Ron Parraguirre, ruled that death benefits can be recovered if certain conditions exist.

The court said the surviving family must show the worker suffered from the industrial injury, that it caused “some psychological condition severe enough to override the employee’s rational judgment and the psychological condition caused the employee to commit suicide.”

Parraguirre called it a “chain of causation” test.

The appeals officer said death benefits were not available to the family because the suicide was a deliberate decision and was not an act of insanity.

The court sent the case back to the hearing officer for him to consider this new relaxed standard which will allow survivors a greater chance of recovering death benefits of a relative who kills himself after being injured on the job.

In other cases, the court:

-- upheld the death sentence for Paul L. Browning, 51, convicted of robbing and the fatal stabbing of Hugo Elsen in his jewelry store in Las Vegas in 1985. The court previously had ordered a second penalty hearing. But the jury came back with the same death penalty. The court rejected arguments that errors were made in the second penalty hearing and that the death penalty was excessive. It said “The evidence shows that Browning brutally stabbed Elsen six times and absconded with jewelry from Elsen’s store.”

-- ruled that a candidate for election to district judge did not have to live in the district in which he sought to be elected. It rejected the claim of state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto that Michael Montero had to live in the Sixth Judicial District that is composed of Humboldt, Lander and Pershing counties. Montero lives in Reno. The court said district judges are state officers who have jurisdiction to hear cases in other judicial district. Therefore the judgeship is a state office and local residency is not required.

-- held that assaults on in-laws can be considered domestic violence. The court granted the petition sought by the city of Las Vegas in the case of Pamela Meunier who was convicted of misdemeanor battery on her brother-in-law Jack Bocharski. The municipal court and the district court both declined to find Meunier guilty of domestic violence arguing the law was unclear. It holds that domestic violence is committed when the victim is the spouse or “any other person to whom the defendant is related by blood or marriage, or a person with whom the defendant lives. In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice Mark Gibbons, the court said, “We conclude … that a battery by a sister-in-law on a brother-in-law falls within the definition of domestic violence.” Domestic violence is still a misdemeanor but its penalty is between two days and six months in jail, between 48-120 hours of community service and a fine between $200 and $1,000. Simple battery is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of not more than $1,000 or both.