New York: Claimant’s Estate Not Entitled to Lump Sum Award for Posthumous SLU Award

Where a New York workers’ compensation claimant died of causes unrelated to his work injuries, having no surviving spouse, no child under the age of 18, and no otherwise qualifying dependents, his estate was not entitled to recover the full value of a posthumous schedule loss of use award in a lump sum. The estate was entitled only to that portion of the SLU award that would have owed to the claimant prior to his death, plus reasonable funeral expenses. The court affirmed a decision of the state’s Appellate Division and, for practical purposes, reversed the Board’s decision that had limited the award to reasonable funeral expenses.

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

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Matter of Estate of Youngjohn v. Berry Plastics Corp., 2021 N.Y. LEXIS 547 (Apr. 1, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 89.02.

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

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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