The opinion and award of the full Commission, which struck Commissioner Marshall’s finding that there was no causal relation between Petty’s suicide and the accident on 13 February 1966, discloses: (1) As to the facts, the Commission was convinced that Petty intentionally took his own life, but that his death was directly attributable to the injuries he received in the accident. (2) As to the law, upon these facts, the Commission thought G. S. 97-12 denied to plaintiff any compensation for Petty’s death.
G. S. 97-12, in pertinent part, provides: “No compensation shall be payable if the injury or death was occasioned by the . . . willful intention of the employee to injure or kill himself or another.” Plaintiff’s assignments of error raise this question: Does an employee who intentionally takes his own life because of a mental derangement produced by a compensable injury act mllfully within the meaning of G.S. 97-12?
Prior to
Painter v. Mead Corporation,
“That the accidental injury of deceased employee, Tolvin Edgar Painter, on July 21, 1960, caused the deceased to become insane and mentally deranged to such an extent that he had an uncontrollable and irresistible impulse to such an extent that he become delirious and frenzied without rational knowledge of the physical consequences of his act, without conscious volition to produce death on September 2, 1960.”
In using the foregoing words to express its finding in
Painter’s
case, the Commission was obviously paraphrasing the
“Sponatski
rule,” formulated in 1915 by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in
In Re Sponatski,
“. . . [Wjhere there follows as the direct result of a physical injury an insanity of such violence as to cause the victim to take his own life through an uncontrollable impulse or in a delirium of frenzy 'without conscious volition to produce death, having knowledge of the physical consequences of the act,’ then there is a direct and unbroken causal connection between the physical injury and the death. But where the resulting insanity is such as to cause suicide through a voluntary willful choice determined by a moderately intelligent mental power which knows the purpose and the physical effect of the suicidal act even though choice is dominated and ruled
*425
iby a disordered mind, then there is a new and independent agency which breaks the chain of causation arising from the injury.”
Id.
at 530,
Thereafter, for many years, the majority of American courts deciding the question here presented followed the Sponatski-rule, or at least gave it lip service.
Painter v. Mead Corporation, supra
at 747; 1A Larson’s Workmen’s Compensation Laws § 36.20 (1967); Annot., Suicide as Compensable Under Workmen’s Compensation Acts,
In effect that rule incorporates the M’Naghten test for criminal Responsibility. Under M’Naghten, if the accused should be in such a state of mental derangement as not to know the nature and quality ■of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, as not to know he was ■doing wrong, the law does not hold him accountable for his acts, for guilt arises from volition and not from a diseased mind.
State v. Spence,
At the time we decided Painter, the Sponatski rule was still the majority rule. However, in writing the Court’s opinion, which affirmed an award to Painter’s dependents, Higgins, J., noted: (1) Sponatski’s is a harsh rule which has been widely criticized as “an application of the test of criminal responsibility not justified in workmen’s compensation cases” and as confusing “an intervening act with an intervening cause”; and (2) a growing minority of jurisdictions in this country are holding that the death of an employee is compensable if a work-connected injury causes insanity which in turn induces suicide. In Painter it was carefully pointed out that in affirming the Commission’s award, we were not to be understood “as fixing as our standard the rigid rule of the Sponatski case”; we merely held that the evidence met Sponatski requirements, the most stringent of all tests, and that further discussion was therefore unnecessary. See Case Law Comment, 42 N. C. L. Rev. 611.
Despite our intimation in
Painter,
however, the Commission cited that case in support of its conclusion that G. S. 97-12 prohibited compensation to the dependents of an employee who intentionally killed himself. We do not think such an interpretation is
*426
compatible with the objective of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, which is to provide for the injured workman, or his dependents in the event of his death, at the cost of the industry which he was serving. To this end, the rule is that benefits under the Act “should not be denied by a technical, narrow, and strict construction.”
Hollman v. City of Raleigh,
To say, as a matter of law, that one who intentionally takes his own life acts willfully is to ignore “the role which pain or despair may play in breaking down a rational, mental process.
Harper v. Industrial Commission,
In 1949 the Supreme Court of Florida adopted the chain-of-causation test.
Whitehead v. Keene Roofing Co.,
*427 “From the evidence, there can be no doubt that the death of the deceased was directly attributable to the injuries he sustained in the fall, from the roof. . . .
“ [W] e are not persuaded that the fact that a workman knew that he was inflicting upon himself a mortal wound will, in all cases, amount to a ‘willful intention’ to kill himself, within the meaning of the statute. We believe that in those cases where the injuries suffered by the deceased result in his becoming devoid of normal judgment and dominated by a disturbance of mind directly caused by his injury and its consequences, his suicide cannot be considered ■‘willful’ within the meaning and intent of the Act. . . .
“While it may be an independent intervening cause in some cases, it is certainly not so in those cases where the incontrovertible •evidence shows that, without the injury, there would have been no suicide. . . .” Id. at 465.
Other jurisdictions having statutes which prohibit compensation for willfully inflicted injuries and death have followed the “realistic and reasonable view” of the Florida Court in Whitehead, supra.
In
Burnight v. Industrial Ace. Com.,
Twenty-six years after the decision in
Barber, supra,
the dissent of Fowler, J., became the law in Wisconsin. In
Brenne v. Department of Industry, Labor & Hum. Rel.,
“. . . The act of suicide cannot then be said to be willful or intentional within the meaning of the statute since its causation ultimately relates back to the original injury, rather than existing as an independent and intervening cause.”
Accord, Graver Tank &
*428
Mfg. Co. v. Industrial Comm.,
“In spite of the fact that the majority rule (Sponatski) is a departure from the conventional rules of causation, the plain wording of the wilful -self-injury statutes appears at first glance to be a convincing argument for the rule’s adoption. It might seem that the lack of conscious volition which is the basis of that rule is quite in accord with these statutory limitations. An examination of the purpose to be served by these statutes, however, would indicate that their application is inappropriate in cases of this type. As has been pointed out the law of workmen’s compensation does not, at the time of the initial injury, employ the common-law concepts of legal cause in determining liability. Work-connection rather than fault underlies recovery. This absence of the traditional safeguards of the common law may necessitate these statutory safeguards when the level of inquiry is the primary source of injury. Certainly, however, there is no reason for these statutes to be applied in determining the range of compensable consequences stemming from the initial injury. Here the employer and his insurer are protected by the common-law concepts of causation which will prevent recovery for additional self-injury which is not connected with the employment. Using the statute to deny compensation for suicides arising out of the employment is anomalous because to do so produces a narrower basis for recovery under the remedial workmen’s compensation acts than would have been possible under common-law tort doctrine.” Id. at 675-676.
We conclude that the chain-of-causation test effectuates the purpose and intent of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. We hold, therefore, that an employee who becomes mentally deranged and deprived of normal judgment as the result of a compensable accident and commits suicide in consequence does not act wilfully within the meaning of G. S. 97-12.
The evidence in this case tends to show that Petty’s death was directly attributable to the accident on 13 February 1966, in that the agitated depression resulting from the accident caused his suicide. This, it seems, the full Commission recognized when it struck Commissioner Marshall’s finding that there was no causal relation be *429 tween the accident and death. The Commission’s belief that, because Petty planned his own destruction causation was immaterial, no doubt explains its failure to make a specific finding with reference to causation.
The transcript does not support Commissioner Marshall’s findings (contained in No. 6) that “all evidentiary medical records and all medical evidence points to the fact that plaintiff (sic) did not suffer any brain injury in the accident . . . and that the depression experienced was the normal reaction to the nature and length of time of recovery for the accident and subsequent operation . . ." (Italics ours.) The record contains evidence to the contrary. Although we do not regard the finding that Petty did not suffer any physical injury to his brain as being determinative of whether his agitated depression was related to his injuries, there is evidence that he was unconscious after the accident and that he had a concussion of the brain. The commissioner’s finding that Petty’s depression was “the natural reaction” to his injury and subsequent operations ignores certain statements in the testimony of each of the three doctors.
It is clear that this proceeding has been heard and reviewed' upon a misapprehension of the applicable principle of law. The opinion and award of the Commission is vacated and the cause is remanded to the Court of Appeals with directions that it be returned to the Industrial Commission, the only tribunal which can find the facts, for a specific finding whether Petty’s suicide was attributable to an abnormal mental condition resulting from his accident on 13 February 1966. “[WJhere facts are found or where the Commission fails to find facts under a misapprehension of law, the court will, when the ends of justice require, remand the cause so that the evidence may be considered in its true legal light.”
Bailey v. Department of Mental Health,
In view of the manner in which objections to Dr. Clarkson’s testimony were handled at the second hearing, it would seem that, upon the request of either party, the Commission should reopen the case to permit his re-examination. We note, however, that on the first hearing Dr. Clarkson gave evidence similar to much of that sought to be adduced by the hypothetical question. When defendant objected to questions propounded by plaintiff’s counsel to Dr. Clark-son, the hearing commissioner deferred his ruling and instructed the doctor to answer “for the record.” The deferred rulings, however, *430 were never entered in the record. Obviously this modus operandi is unsatisfactory. Ordinarily, the proper procedure is for the commissioner to require counsel to state the grounds of objection and then to make his ruling. If there is a valid objection to the form of the question, counsel can rephrase it; if the objection is made on other grounds, the Commission and opposing counsel are alerted to the legal principle invoked and can appraise it. In any event, when a ruling is deferred it should be entered in the transcript before the hearing commissioner makes his award. Only in this way can the parties, the full Commission, and the court (if there is an appeal) intelligently review the decision. Apparently the full Commission failed to enter rulings on the evidence because of its interpretation of G. S. 97-12.
In justice to the hearing commissioner we are compelled to say that he probably felt driven to the procedure he adopted by the hypothetical question which plaintiff’s counsel propounded. Seemingly it was articulated on the spur of the moment and, like Topsy, it just grew. Its form changed as the objections and pages multiplied and confusion became worse confounded.
All the testimony of the lay witnesses tended to establish a direct causal relation between Petty’s accident and suicide. The purpose of the hypothetical question was to establish this relationship by expert testimony also. By and large, the doctor’s “answers for the record” were competent, and the testimony could be properly elicited.
Reversed and remanded.