New York: $86,000 Penalty Assessed for Failure to Provide Coverage for Live-in Domestic Worker

Where a husband and wife employed a live-in domestic to perform housekeeping and child care duties, but failed to maintain workers’ compensation insurance, it was appropriate for the New York Workers’ Compensation Board to impose an $86,000 penalty pursuant to N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 26-a(2)(b). The domestic worker filed a claim after she cut her hand on a broken piece of glass while washing dishes. The WCLJ assessed a penalty of $1,000 for each 10-day period of non-compliance. The employers acknowledged that they had failed to secure workers’ compensation insurance, but contended the penalty should have been much less, perhaps as little as $3,000 using an “alternative” method allowed under the statute. The appellate court indicated the employers had, unfortunately, not raised the argument as to the alternate method of computing the penalty before the WCLJ. Nor did they present any testimony with respect to their failure to obtain workers’ compensation coverage. The $86,000 penalty was, therefore, appropriate.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Matter of Castillo v. Brown, 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4839 (June 15, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 102.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

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