Stressed Out Owner on His Own

Wednesday, December 28, 2011 | 0

Raymond Letellier co-founded a steel fabrication company in New Hampshire called Steelelements. The company suffered a major fire in March 2007. They rebuilt, although the cost of the rebuilding, managed by Letellier's partner, exceeded the budget. In October 2009, the company went out of business. Throughout the long, downward spiral, Letellier suffered from stress, hypertension and depression. Soon after the company's failure, he filed for personal and business bankruptcy. At the same time, he applied for workers' comp benefits.

Letellier's claim was initially denied, then accepted for the medical costs only, and then denied again. Eventually the claim reached the New Hampshire Supreme Court, where a deeply divided court (3-2) ruled against Letellier. The court reasoned that the failure of the company was akin to a personnel action: workers comp does not cover such employer actions as discipline, termination and lay off. In closing the business, Letellier subjected himself - and everyone else - to a lay off. - a non-compensable personnel action.

Work-Related Stress?

Two dissenting judges pointed out that the majority focused almost exclusively on the ultimate failure of the company, the lay off itself. But the extraordinary and relentless stressors in Letellier's life began with the fire and continued throughout the struggle to keep the over-leveraged company in business. This is not the stress of a single event, but the cumulation of stress over months and years. The dissenters noted that Letellier's commute to the factory was 100 miles, so he often slept in his office, where ever-pending doom haunted his every waking moment and his troubled dreams. They opined that his multiple health issues were predominantly caused by work.

Letellier, once the proud owner of a successful business, finds himself in the same situation as laid off workers across America. He is on his own and out of luck.

We will set aside for the moment what may be Letellier's biggest mistake: instead of trying to make things that people can actually use, he should have pursued a career in finance, where he could have sold worthless mortgages, watched his company flounder, and then be rescued by tax-payer bailout, all the while preserving a superbly inflated salary. That's an All-American story of a different sort, albeit fodder for another day.

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Jon Coppelman is a principal with Lynch Ryan & Associates, an employer consulting firm based in Massachusetts. This column was reprinted with his permission from the firm's blog, http://www.workerscompinsider.com