New York: Bond Trader Denied Reduced Earnings Award in Spite of PTSD Related to September 11 Attack

A New York appellate court affirmed a decision of the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board that denied a corporate bond trader’s application for an award of reduced earnings that he claimed were caused by a PTSD condition brought about by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.  The broker worked on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center South Tower and escaped when the terrorist attack transpired.  The court agreed with the Board that while there was no dispute that the bond trader suffered from PTSD, there was no medical opinion that he was incapable of engaging in his former profession and in fact, the trader engaged in his former profession for more than seven years after the attack and did not claim lost wages for most of that period.  His lower earnings appeared to have been caused by several voluntary employment moves he made as well as his decision to start what turned out to be an unsuccessful bond brokerage business of his own.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See In the Matter of the Claim of Launer v. Euro Brokers, 2014 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2088 (Mar. 27, 2014) [2014 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2088 (Mar. 27, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.02, 84.01 [7.02, 84.01]

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

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