New York: Withdrawal of Partner Does Not Cause Loss of Coverage under Employer’s Workers’ Comp Insurance Policy

Where a father and son operated a farm business as a partnership, securing workers’ compensation insurance through the State Insurance Fund (“SIF”), the subsequent withdrawal of the father from the partnership, with the son’s continuance in the business, did not violate the policy in such a fashion as to make the business uninsured, held a New York appellate court. The only stated consequence of failing to apprise SIF of a change in ownership was a potential change in the amount of the premium due. Accordingly, where the decedent, a 14-year-old boy, was killed in a farming accident, a decision by the Workers' Compensation Board that the employer was insured and an award of death benefits [doubled because of the double indemnity provision for the illegal employment of a minor language in N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 14-a(1)] was appropriate, in spite of the mother’s contention that the employer was uninsured. 

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 Smith v Park, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 3535 (3rd Dept. May 17, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 102.02,150.03.

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