The pattern is always about the same. You got hurt at work. The checks came for a while, then stopped. Maybe you went back on the job, maybe you just stopped going to the doctor because the appointments were not fixing anything. The case went quiet. Nobody called. You assumed that was the end of it.
Years later somebody mentions that they got a check for their shoulder, or their hand, or their knee — a separate one, after everything else was over — and you realize you never got anything like that.
You may not have. And it may not be too late.
Two different kinds of money
This is the confusion at the center of it, and almost nobody explains it at the time.
The checks you got while you were out of work were lost wage benefits. They replaced part of what you were not earning. They were never payment for the injury itself.
A schedule loss of use award is the other thing. It is compensation for permanent damage to a body part — the percentage of it you did not get back. It is a separate award, it comes after your condition has stabilized, and it is paid whether or not you lost a single day of work after that point. You can be back at full duty, earning more than you ever did, and still be owed one.
People who never received one usually did not turn it down. They were never evaluated for it.
Why it never happened
An award for permanency cannot be made until two things occur. Your treating doctor has to find that you have reached maximum medical improvement — the point where your condition has stabilized and more treatment is not expected to change it — and the doctor has to file the Board’s form saying so, Form C-4.3, the Doctor’s Report of MMI/Permanent Impairment.
If that form never gets filed, permanency is never assessed. No schedule loss of use, no classification, nothing. The claim simply stops.
And there are a hundred ordinary reasons the form never gets filed. You stopped treating because the treatment was not helping. You moved. You changed jobs and lost the doctor. Your lawyer’s office stopped returning calls, or closed. You felt better and figured you were done. None of those are mistakes anybody would call you out for at the time — but each one ends the case before the only document that triggers the award ever reaches the Board.
Which injuries qualify
This is where the honest answer matters more than the hopeful one.
Schedule loss of use applies to the extremities and the senses — arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, toes, eyes, ears. If your permanent problem is in one of those, this page is about you.
It does not apply to the back, the neck, the spine, the head, or internal organs. Those are handled through classification and loss of wage earning capacity instead, which works on a completely different basis. If your injury was to your back, the answer to “why didn’t I get a schedule award” is that there is no such award for a back, because it is a different kind of financial award. Our page on the difference between the two lays that out. And if the same accident injured a limb as well as your back, the back does not cancel out the schedule award for the arm or leg — you can be owed both.
How long you have
There is a time limit, and which limit applies to you depends on something specific: whether the carrier ever paid you anything.
The Workers’ Compensation Board’s power over a case is continuing. Section 123 of the Workers’ Compensation Law says the Board “may, from time to time, make such modification or change with respect to former findings, awards, decisions or orders relating thereto, as in its opinion may be just.” That is the starting point — a closed case is not a dead one.
The outer limits sit in that same section:
- If your claim was disallowed after a hearing, or was closed without any award ever being made, it cannot be reopened after seven years from the date of the accident.
- If money was paid on your claim — and lost time checks count — the bar is different. No award can be made where the application comes after both a lapse of eighteen years from the date of injury and a lapse of eight years from the date of the last payment of compensation. Both have to have run.
Read that second one carefully, because it is the situation most people in this position are actually in. If you were paid for lost time and the case then went quiet without a permanency finding, the seven-year rule is not your rule. You may have considerably longer than you think.
Whether a particular claim can be reopened is decided by the Board on the record in that case. Nobody can tell you the answer from a description over the phone — but somebody can look.
What it costs to find out
Nothing. Not for the consultation, and not out of your own pocket if there is an award.
A workers’ compensation attorney in New York cannot charge you directly. The Board’s own language is that your representative “may not charge you directly for work.” If there is an award, the attorney applies to the Board for a fee, the Board approves it, and the carrier pays it out of the award.
Since January 1, 2023 the amount is set by statute rather than negotiated. On a schedule loss of use, Workers’ Compensation Law § 24(2)(c) provides a fee of 15% of the compensation due above what the carrier has already paid. Not 15% of everything — 15% of what gets recovered that was not coming to you before.
If there is nothing there, there is no award, and there is no fee. Being told honestly that a claim is time-barred costs you nothing either.
If you cannot reach the lawyer you had
This stops more people than the time limits do, and it should not.
Your claim is yours. It does not belong to the firm that handled it. It does not disappear because that firm closed, moved, retired, or stopped answering the phone. Your case exists in the Board’s records independently of any attorney, and you are entitled to see what is in it — you can register for eCase on the Board’s website and follow your own claim.
You are also entitled to an attorney of your own choosing. The Board says so directly: “As an injured worker, you have the right to be represented by an attorney or a licensed representative of your choosing.” You do not need permission from the firm you had, and changing representation does not cost you a second fee — the Board divides one fee between the outgoing and incoming attorney. The same is true if your union sent you to the firm in the first place.
What to do now
- Find your case number. It is on any Board correspondence you kept. If you have none, the Board’s customer service line at (877) 632-4996 can help you locate the claim.
- Work out the two dates. The date of the accident, and roughly when the last check came. Those two dates decide which limit applies.
- Do not write it off because it feels old. The eighteen-year and eight-year figures surprise people, and both have to have run.
- Do not assume your body part does not count. Shoulders, knees, hands and wrists are the ones most often left unassessed, and they are all schedulable.
Frequently asked questions
I went back to work. Doesn’t that mean I’m not owed anything?
No. A schedule loss of use award compensates permanent damage to the body part, not lost wages. Returning to work full duty, at full pay, does not reduce or eliminate it. This is the single most common reason people never pursue an award they were entitled to.
My case was closed years ago. Is it really still open to this?
A closed case is not the same as a dead one. The Board’s jurisdiction over a claim is continuing, and the limits in Section 123 are the outer boundary rather than the ordinary rule. Whether yours is inside those limits depends on the dates and on what the Board’s file shows.
I never had a lawyer at all. Does that change anything?
Not for the worse. An unrepresented claim is one of the most common places where permanency is never assessed, because nobody was watching for the C-4.3 that triggers it.
I already got a settlement. Did that include this?
It depends entirely on what you signed. A Section 32 waiver agreement generally closes out future claims, including permanency. A lump sum of some other kind may not have. Which one you have is a question about the document in your file, and it is answerable.
My injury got worse since then. Is that a different thing?
Yes, and it is worth knowing the difference. An award that was never made is one situation. An award that was made and is now too low because the condition deteriorated is a separate route with its own requirements.
How do I even find out what’s in my old file?
Register for eCase through the Board’s website and you can look at your own claim — case status, every award made, and what the carrier reported. Our page on reopening an old claim walks through what you will be looking at.
Find out before you write it off
If you were hurt at work, the checks stopped, and nobody ever told you what your arm or your knee or your hand was worth, that is a question with an answer — and finding the answer costs you nothing. Call 718.701.2776 or 800.310.5520.
This page describes New York law in general terms. It is not legal advice about your claim, and reading it does not make us your attorneys.
