Finding “sufficient causal relationship” between work-related injuries sustained by Cornell painter James Smith in 2001 and his suicide in 2007, a New York State appellate court upheld a decision awarding Smith’s wife workers’ compensation payment.

In rejecting Cornell’s appeal, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court cited a psychiatrist and an independent medical examiner who “confirmed that [Smith’s] disability and accompanying chronic pain led to his depression and, eventually, his suicide,” according to the ruling released last week.

According to the court’s decision, Cornell claimed “other factors contributed to [Smith’s] suicide and severed the causal link between [Smith’s] 2001 injuries and his suicide.”

However, the court rejected this argument as it upheld the initial ruling from the New York State Workers Compensation Board, saying a work-related accident “need only be a contributing cause of a resulting mental injury” to merit compensation.

Anna Dmitriev, the lawyer for Smith’s wife Brenda, said Cornell’s insurance carrier is “responsible for medical care and lost wages under the workers’ compensation law,” which stipulates a weekly payment to Smith’s wife of two-thirds of an average weekly wages.

Dmitriev said she doubts Cornell will again appeal the case.

Jason Carlton, who represented the University, declined a request for an interview on Wednesday.

“Reading between the lines, I think that it’s probably the insurance company that made Cornell appeal this decision,” said Linda Holzbaur of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center. Holzbaur called the workers’ compensation system in New York “one of the worst.”

“Employers in New York State pay one of the highest rates of workers’ compensation in the country, yet the workers receive one of the lowest,” Holzbaur said. She said the difference between money paid for insurance and payouts made to workers goes to “insurance companies that collect that money.”

Dmitriev said Smith’s initial injury in 2001 involved his lower back and “subsequently expanded to include other body parts,” including his neck, shoulder, headaches and, eventually, his “consequential depressive conditions.”

Citing Matter of Musa v. Nassau County Police Department, the court held that workers’ compensation death benefits may be awarded for a suicide “if it ‘result[ed] from insanity, brain derangement or a pattern of mental deterioration caused by work-related injury.’” The court ruled that depression “can constitute such a brain derangement.”

Holzbaur stressed the importance of taking seriously the “psychological effects of the things that happen at work.”

She lamented the fact that depression is “so frequently looked on as a personal defect.”