New York: Board Justified in Failing to Excuse Claimant’s Late Notice to Employer

Where an employer placed a worker on medical leave in February 2013, due to a bilateral knee condition and, more than a year later, and after consulting with a different orthopedist, the worker sought workers' compensation benefits, attributing her bilateral knee condition to walking between the employer's work sites and the repetitive stair climbing associated with her job duties, an appellate court would not say that the Board abused its discretion in failing to excuse claimant's untimely notice of her claim. The court acknowledged that the Board could excuse late notice if the employer or its agent had knowledge of the accident or the employer did not suffer any prejudice. Here, however, there was no evidence that the employer had actual notice. Moreover, since the record as a whole evidenced a worsening of claimant's symptoms over time, the Board's finding that the employer was prejudiced by the delay was supported by the record.

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 Taylor v Little Angels Head Start, 2018 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5925 (3rd Dept. Sept. 6, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.03.

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