This is a workers’ compensation office. If you were hurt on the job in New York, that is the case we handle, from the first filing through the hearings to whatever the claim is finally worth.

Workers’ compensation claims come to us from across New York State. For everything else — a car accident, a fall, a parent being neglected in a nursing home, an illness traced back to September 11th — we serve clients throughout the five boroughs: Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. Those cases are described further down this page. If you are not sure what you have, that is what the first phone call is for, and it costs nothing.

Workers’ compensation

If you were hurt at work in New York, you have a right to benefits without having to prove anyone was at fault. That is the whole bargain of the compensation system: you give up the right to sue your employer, and in exchange you get medical treatment and wage replacement regardless of who caused the accident. Even a worker whose own mistake caused the injury is covered.

Other personal injury attorneys in New York refer their clients’ compensation claims to this office. That is worth saying plainly, because compensation practice is its own world — its own courtrooms, its own judges, its own forms, its own medical rules — and a lot of lawyers who handle accident cases do not practice in it.

The workers’ compensation page is the place to start. What follows are the questions that actually come up once a claim is open.

What the claim pays

  • Average weekly wage — the single number the whole claim is built on, how it is supposed to be calculated, and what gets left out of it when nobody checks.
  • Classification and loss of wage-earning capacity — what happens when the treatment is finished but the injury is permanent, and why this is the most consequential finding in the case.
  • Section 32 settlements — closing a claim for a lump sum, what you give up when you do, and why the agreement cannot simply be undone later.
  • Working while collecting benefits — what you are allowed to do, what has to be reported, and the difference between a reduced-earnings claim and a fraud allegation.

Getting medical treatment authorized

  • Denied medical treatment — what to do when the carrier will not approve what your doctor ordered, and the deadlines the insurer is held to.
  • Carrier-directed providers — whether you have to treat with the insurance company’s doctor, and what the law actually says about choosing your own.
  • Occupational disease — injuries that came from the work itself rather than one accident, and how the deadlines run differently for them.

Keeping the claim alive

  • The two-year deadline — the rule that decides whether you have a claim at all, and the situations where it is measured from something other than the accident.
  • Labor market attachment — why benefits stop for people who are still hurt, and what you have to be able to show to keep them.
  • Light duty offers — what happens when the employer offers you a job you do not think you can do.
  • Your hearing — who is in the room, what the judge is deciding, and what is expected of you.

When the employer or the carrier fights you

When a work injury is also somebody else’s fault

Section 11 of the Workers’ Compensation Law makes the compensation benefit the only remedy against your employer. Section 29 of the same statute says you do not have to choose between that benefit and a lawsuit against anybody else. Both things are true at the same time, and the second one gets overlooked constantly.

So the question after a work injury is rarely whether to file a claim or bring a suit. It is who, other than the employer, was responsible — the property owner, the general contractor, another subcontractor, a driver, the maker of a defective machine — and then how to run the two cases together.

Running them together matters because they are connected in ways that can hurt you. The compensation carrier gets a lien on whatever the lawsuit recovers. It has to be asked for written consent before that lawsuit settles, or a court order obtained in its place, and a settlement signed without one can end your future benefits. These are not exotic problems. They are ordinary features of a work injury case, and they are the reason it helps to have the same office watching both. See third-party cases and the comp lien.

If somebody other than your employer may have been responsible for your work injury, say so on the first call. That is a decision best made at the beginning rather than discovered later.

When a worker has died

Workers’ compensation death benefits are payable to the family of a worker killed on the job or by an occupational illness — weekly payments to a surviving spouse and children, plus funeral and burial expenses, with no need to prove anyone was negligent.

A wrongful death lawsuit against whoever caused the death is a separate case, and the two are not alternatives — where a death happened at work, both are usually available. The lawsuit has to be brought by the personal representative of the estate rather than by the family directly, it runs two years from the date of death, and New York limits what it can recover in ways that surprise most families.

September 11th claims

Staten Island sent a great many people downtown after September 11th, and a great many more worked the Fresh Kills site in the months that followed. Illnesses connected to that exposure are still being diagnosed now, twenty-five years on.

The Victim Compensation Fund page covers who qualifies and how to apply. Where the exposure happened in the course of your job, there may also be a New York workers’ compensation claim — see Fresh Kills and 9/11 responder claims.

Other practice areas

Not every injury happens at work. Each of these pages explains how that kind of claim works, what it turns on, and what the deadlines are.

  • Personal injury — car accidents, falls on sidewalks and inside buildings, construction accidents under Labor Law § 240 and § 241, pedestrian and bicycle cases. These claims turn on evidence that is easiest to collect early: the police report, the photographs, the maintenance records, the names of the people who saw it.
  • Medical malpractice and hospital negligence — mistakes by individual professionals, and failures of the institution itself. Both need expert medical proof that the care fell below the accepted standard and that the failure caused the harm, which is what separates a bad outcome from a case.
  • Nursing home neglect and abuse — pressure sores, unexplained falls, dehydration, sudden withdrawal, injuries nobody can account for. Neglect and abuse are different things legally, and that page explains the difference and what the warning signs look like.

Talk to us

Most of these cases have a deadline running from the day of the accident or the day of the death, and some of them have more than one running at different speeds. If you are not sure which apply to you, that is worth a phone call early rather than late.

Call 718.701.2776 (toll-free: 800.310.5520) or contact us. Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.

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