New York: Videotape Establishes That Injured Worker Exaggerated Symptoms to Influence Medical Opinions

Where videotape surveillance indicated an injured employee was capable of activities that were substantially more strenuous than those that she told her treating physician that she was capable of performing, the Board was justified in finding the employee had violated N.Y. Workers’ Comp. Law § 114-a, held a state appellate court. Moreover, there was substantial evidence supporting the Board’s decision not only to impose the mandatory penalty, but also the discretionary penalty disqualifying the employee from receiving future wage replacement benefits. The videotape showed claimant performing a variety of activities, including carrying lumber and a ladder, using a screw gun, climbing up and down the ladder and walking on a roof with a leaf blower. The appellate court held there was adequate evidence to support the Board’s finding that claimant overstated the extent of his disability when interacting with physicians for the purpose of influencing his workers’ compensation claim.

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 Peck v. The Donaldson Org., 2021 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 607 (3d Dept. Feb. 4, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 39.03.

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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