New York: Housekeeper’s Fall While Walking to Bathroom at Employers’ Hampton’s Residence Found Compensable

Substantial evidence supported an award of benefits to a housekeeper who worked for a couple at both their private residence in Manhattan and the Hamptons the evidence indicated the housekeeper, while staying overnight at the Hamptons residence, sustained injuries in a fall as she went to use the bathroom early in the morning. The couple maintained the injuries did not arise out of and in the course of the employment. The appellate court disagreed. While the housekeeper worked primarily at the couple’s Manhattan residence, she occasionally traveled to the Hamptons in the summer to assist in their entertaining. At the time of her injury, she had no set hours and duties, but was to assist with a party the following evening. The Court held this was sufficient evidence to support an award. That she was on a bathroom break at the time of the fall made no difference.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Matter of Deleon v. Elghanayan, 2018 N.Y. App. LEXIS 1835 (3rd Dept., Mar. 22, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 21.01.

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