New York: Service of Application for Board Review on TPA Was Not Service on Carrier Itself

Where a workers’ compensation claimant served an application for Board review upon the insurance carrier’s third-party administrator—but not the carrier itself—such service was defective and New York’s Workers’ Compensation Board was within its discretion to deny the application on that basis, held a state appellate court. The court acknowledged that from the initial stages of the case, the TPA had been clearly identified as the administrator handling the claim on behalf of the carrier. The court stressed, however, that a TPA does not stand in the shoes of the carrier. Nor is it a necessary party of interest. The carrier is the real party of interest and the regulatory framework of the Board requires that the carrier be served.

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 Barry v. Verizon N.Y. Inc., 2021 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5113 (3d Dept. Sept. 16, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 124.08.

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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