New York: Close Proximity of Time Between Injury and Firing Supports Retaliation Claim

Observing that the state's Workers' Compensation Board had found the claimant's testimony credible, according to which the claimant's supervisor "stormed off" when the claimant advised that he would be filing a workers' compensation claim, and that the supervisor also muttered that the boss would not be "very happy with that," a New York appellate court found substantial evidence supported the Board's finding that the claimant's firing -- shortly after the incident -- was retaliatory and violated N.Y. Workers' Comp. Law § 120. While the supervisor testified he had not so reacted to the news of the potential claim, the Board found that testimony not to be credible. It was not for the appellate court to weigh the evidence.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the 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 Markey v. Autosaver Ford, 2020 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1923 (3d Dept., Mar. 16, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

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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