New York: Surviving Spouse Receives Death Benefits for Employee’s Unwitnessed Death at Work

Under the general rule in New York, and many other jurisdictions, where an unwitnessed death occurs during the course of a decedent’s employment, a presumption arises that the death arose out of that employment [see N.Y. Work. Comp. Law § 21(1)]. Ordinarily, that presumption can be rebutted by substantial evidence demonstrating that the death was not work related. A New York appellate court affirmed an award of death benefits to a claimant whose spouse suffered a fatal heart attack while she was present within her office at the employer’s facility at approximately 8:00 a.m. one morning. At that time, one of the employer’s managers heard a loud band, went to the decedent’s office, and found her lying alone and unresponsive on the floor. The death certificate indicated that the decedent died from cardiac arrhythmia due to arteriosclerotic heart disease with obesity as a contributing factor. The appellate court ruled that there was no dispute that claimant was entitled to the statutory presumption. The carrier’s expert testified that the cardiac event was most likely due to preexisting coronary artery disease and that the death was not causally connected to the employment. The Board’s award could stand, however, since there was evidence that the decedent was under work-related stress and claimant’s medical expert opined that the stress was a factor in the fatal heart attack. The Court indicated that while claimant’s expert acknowledged that decedent had other cardiac risk factors, such as obesity and a daily smoking habit, decedent’s work-related illness need not be the sole or even the most direct cause of death, provided that the claimant demonstrated that the compensable illness was a contributing factor in the decedent’s demise.

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 the Claim of Lavigne v. Hannaford Bros. Co., 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6082 (Aug. 10, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 7.04.

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