Personal Injury accidents can have life altering effects on the person who is injured. Sometimes, the problems that the person suffers exceed the physical injuries that have occurred. When a person goes from being active and unimpaired one day to infirmed the next, it is impossible for the person to not have some depression about the change in life circumstances. In some of these cases, the injured person becomes so depressed by the changes in his or her life circumstances that they lose the will to live. In these cases, New York law has stipulated that if the person filing a wrongful death suit must be able to show that there is a causal link between the person’s suicide and the injury that they received at work.
One case that involved this type of wrongful death action involved a man who was injured twice at work. He was injured 14 years before his death and then again five years before his death. In 1945, the decedent was an usher at a movie theatre when a fight broke out in the men’s room. He attempted to break up the fight and was pushed into a marble wall, and suffered a brain injury. He was diagnosed with a cerebral concussion as a result of the accident and eleven days later a workers’ compensation doctor announced that he was fully recovered. His wife claims that although he went back to work. Her husband suffered from headaches blackouts, and fainting spells following this accident.
The second accident occurred in 1959 in Nassau, when he suffered a debilitating back injury while at work. The back injury changed his lifestyle and caused him to plummet into a state of deep depression. His wife stated that it was this deep depression that led him to take his own life. The workers compensation board disagreed. They contend that this man was suffering from many issues that affected his mental stability long before he took his own life. They contend that he was suffering from mental illness before he had his first work place injury in 1945.