New York: Stress Must be Proved According to Objective, Not Subjective Standard

A New York appellate court held that in order to establish a claim for PTSD, it was insufficient for a state correctional officer to show that he had been made to feel threatened--an inmate threatened to do bodily harm to the officer's family--he must instead establish that the stress level he faced was more severe than the stress levels faced by other correctional officers performing similar duties. The court, therefore, affirmed a Board decision denying benefits related to the officer's PTSD. New York utilizes an objective, not a subjective, standard when it comes to establishing a mental injury.

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 Rivenburg v. County of Albany, 2020 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5378 (Oct. 1, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 44.05, 56.06.

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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