Workers’ Compensation : Mental Injury – Occupational Disease – Similarly-Situated Employees

Where a woman who worked for the highway department responding to catastrophic accidents for many years suffered a work-related depression, the claimant need no longer prove that she suffered extraordinary and unusual work-related stress when compared to similarly-situated employees because that requirement is not expressed by the plain language of the statute, but was a judicially created standard under liberal construction, and the 2005 amendment to the Workers’ Compensation statute requires strict construction, and substantial and competent evidence supported the finding that the claimant suffered a work-related occupational disease to support the award of permanent partial disability and future medical care.

Judgment is affirmed.

Mantia v. Department of Transportation (MLW No. 69297/Case No. ED103016 – 16 pages) (Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, James M. Dowd, J.) Appealed from the Labor and Industrial Relations Commission (Jeffrey Wells Wright and Catherine Stattman Salmon for appellant) (Jeffrey Ray Swaney and Ellen Joye Hudson for respondents).

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