A new trend in case law dealing with work-related psychological trauma has emerged over the past year that both clarifies the test dealing with workplace mental injury and will likely lighten the burden for employees to make their case, according to legal pundits.
A series of decisions by the Quebec Administrative Labour Tribunal adjudicators have called into question the widely-held notion, fleshed out in the 1990s, that the event or series of events alleged to be the cause of the mental injury be objectively traumatic, a requirement that imposes a burden of proof that is higher than the balance of probabilities, noted employment and labour law experts.