New York: Medical Testimony as to Possible Causes of Heart Attack Did Not Meet Evidentiary Standard

The New York Workers’ Compensation Board erred when it found that a corrections officer's work activities were causally connected to his myocardial infarction where the employer’s medical expert opined that the infarction was not caused by work-related physical activity, but instead was suffered hours later after claimant underwent a stress test at the hospital. Claimant’s own expert testified that there was a possibility that the work activities—delivering two heavy food carts from the facility’s kitchen to certain cell tiers—could have caused the myocardial infarction. The appellate court acknowledged that it was the Board’s responsibility to resolve conflicting medical opinions, but stated that here the testimony of claimant’s expert was insufficient to support a finding of work-related causation. Because of the weakness in claimant’s medical expert’s opinion, there was no conflict to resolve.

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 In the Matter of the Claim of Hartigan v. Albany County Sheriff’s Dep’t, 2016 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 4159 (3rd Dept., June 2, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 130.06.

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