New York: Widow Fails to Connect Husband's 2016 Death to 2004 Work Injury

The presumption contained in N. Y. Workers' Comp. § 21(a) was insufficient to support an award of death benefits to a widow whose husband suffered an injury by accident in 2004, was awarded PPD in 2007, and who died in 2016, where the only medical evidence tying the death to the original injury was from the decedent's pain management specialists who admitted he had not reviewed any of the medical records maintained by the decedent's treating physician and admitted further that he had not reviewed the decedent's hospital records in the days prior to his death. The widow contended the decedent's post-disablement, sedentary lifestyle, and resulting weight gain were factors contributing to his death. The Board found the widow had not proved her case, however. The presumption would help in cases where the death was unwitnessed or unexplained. That was clearly not the case here, agreed the appellate court.

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 Turner v. New York State Dept. of Corr. & Community Supervision, 2020 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5676 (Oct. 8, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 10.02.

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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