New York: Amputation of Fingers and Thumb Results in Award That Exceeds Amount for Total Loss of Hand

Where an employee sustained a severe injury to his right hand that resulted in the amputation of all four fingers and his thumb—surgeons were able to reattach part of the thumb, but it had no pinching ability—the Board did not err when it made an award for 100 percent loss of use of the thumb, although the employer and employee had already agreed to a 100 percent schedule loss of use of the right hand. The divided appellate court noted that in some circumstances the New York State Guidelines for Determining Permanent Impairment and Loss of Wage Earning Capacity contemplated that scheduled loss of use awards for parts of the hand might exceed that allowed for the full loss of the hand. Here the majority concluded that the loss of four fingers, excluding his thumb, warranted the previously awarded 100 percent SLU of the right hand and that, separately considering the thumb injury, the employee was also entitled to a 100 percent SLU of his right thumb.

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 Deck v. Dorr, 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4130 (May 25, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 87.05.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see