New York: Employee is Disqualified from Further Benefits by Failure to Disclose Auto Accident on Medical Intake Form

Where an employee failed to disclose on an intake form at the office of a physician employed to conduct an independent medical examination that he had been involved in a motor vehicle accident after his work-related injury, the Board could exercise its discretion to disqualify the employee from receiving additional workers’ compensation benefits. The court was not persuaded by the employee’s contention that his spouse had completed the form for him, since he had in fact signed it. The appellate court stressed that its judicial review was limited to whether the penalty administered by the Board was an abuse of its discretion. The Board had noted the employee’s spouse was a high school graduate who had attended college for almost a year. The Board acted within its discretion when it indicated it did not believe the spouse did not understand the meaning of the word “subsequent” when used in the sentence seeking information about other injuries the employee might have sustained after the work-related injury.

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 Lopez v. Clean Air Quality Servs. Inc., 2021 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5522 (3d Dept., Oct. 7, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 39.03.

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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