New York: Schedule Loss of Use Awards Are for “Members,” Not Subordinate Parts

Stressing that schedule loss of use (“SLU”) awards under N.Y. Workers’ Comp. Law § 15(3) may be awarded only for a statutorily-enumerated member — e.g., an arm or leg — and not for subordinate body parts, such as a knee or hip, a claimant who sustained a 2006 injury to both knees and a separate 2009 injury to both hips was entitled to one cumulative SLU award for each leg, not one SLU award to the leg based on the injuries to his knees and another based on injuries to his hips. The court acknowledged that a claimant could receive more than one SLU award for a loss of use of more than one member or parts of members, but added that SLU awards were nevertheless limited only to those “members” statutorily enumerated in § 15(3).

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 Johnson v. City of N.Y., 2020 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 946 (Feb. 6, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 86.03.

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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