New York: Third-Party Defendant Claim For Contribution Against Employer Fails Under “Grave Injury” Statute

In New York, absent an express agreement to the contrary, a defendant sued in tort by an injured employee may seek contribution or indemnification from the employer only if the employee suffered a "grave injury, as that term is defined in N.Y. Workers’ Comp. Law § 11. A New York appellate court held that where an employer/third-party defendant established a prima facie case that the plaintiff/employee had not sustained such a grave injury, and where the defendant/third-party plaintiff failed to offer evidence raising a triable issue of fact, the trial court appropriately granted summary judgment in favor of the employer on the contribution claim. While the employee had sustained a brain injury, there was no evidence that the employee had sustained permanent total disability.

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 Grech v HRC Corp., 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3660 (May 10, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 121.03.

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