Citation Numbers: 23 A.D.3d 804, 803 N.Y.S.2d 747
Judges: Rose
Filed Date: 11/10/2005
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 11/1/2024
Appeal from a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Board, filed May 11, 2004, which ruled that decedent’s death was causally related to his employment and awarded workers’ compensation benefits.
Claimant’s decedent sustained injuries at work in March 1991. Although the employer provided workers’ compensation benefits for those injuries, a dispute arose when it withheld differential pay mandated by its collective bargaining agreement with
Workers’ compensation death benefits may be awarded where it is established that the worker’s death was “causally related to stress and anxiety brought about by the [employer’s] conduct in challenging his compensation claim” (Matter of Turdo v New York City Dept. of Sanitation, 117 AD2d 861, 862 [1986], lv denied 68 NY2d 609 [1986]). For such a claim to succeed, the employer’s conduct must be shown to be sufficiently egregious and prolonged to constitute a wholly unjustified withholding or delay of benefits accompanied by a causally related death. The issue of whether the employer’s conduct met this requirement is a factual determination that the Board must make, and this Court will not disturb the Board’s determination if it is supported by substantial evidence. Here, the uncontradicted testimony from claimant, claimant’s medical expert and decedent’s attorney provided substantial evidence supporting the Board’s determination that decedent’s death resulted from “a prolonged pattern of intimidation, deceit, and unlawful coercion, the wrongful withholding of benefits to which decedent was entitled, and generally disgraceful conduct towards the decedent.”
Finally, the employer’s claim that an earlier Board determination erroneously upheld the preclusion of the testimony of two
Crew III, J.P., Peters, Mugglin and Kane, JJ., concur. Ordered that the decision is affirmed, without costs.