New York: Pressure to File False Reports Constitutes Unusual Level of Stress and Supports Award for Mental Injury

As is the case with a number of other states, New York allows recovery for work-related stress if the claimant can show that the stress that caused the injury was greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment. A New York appellate court, reversing a decision by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board, held a worker had established that he was under an unusual level of stress where he testified that during a promotional event for a manufacturer of high-priced luxury goods, he was directed by a supervisor to fabricate reserve orders in order to deceive the manufacturer and enhance the employer’s inventory. One supervisor testified that claimant became upset during the promotional event and that the supervisor heard the employee tell another supervisor that he did not want to submit false orders. The WCLJ concluded that claimant sustained a mental injury as a result of “the stress of being directed to engage in deceptive business practices” and that this stress was greater than that experienced in the normal work environment. The Board subsequently disallowed the claim, finding that, because all of the employees in claimant’s department were pressured to place reserve orders and were given the same instruction, claimant’s stress was not greater than that of similarly situated workers. The court held that the mere fact that other employees may have received the same instruction could not support a finding that the stress was not unusual; claimant testified that he would have been fired for such conduct in other upscale department stores where he previously had worked.

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. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Cox v. Saks Fifth Ave., 2015 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5864 (3rd Dep’t, July 9, 2015) [2015 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5864 (3rd Dep’t, July 9, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 56.04 [56.04]

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

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