Workers’ compensation is a government-mandated insurance program designed to provide coverage for injuries or illnesses that occur as a direct result of your employment. Your employer pays insurance premiums for your workers’ compensation coverage. The New York Workers' Compensation Board administers the program and processes claims.
Yes, but you will recover through workers’ compensation insurance, rather than by traditional personal injury law. When you suffer a workplace injury, there are forms your employer will provide you with that must be filled out before your claim can be processed by your employer’s insurer. If the insurer determines your injury is work-related, you will recover right away. If the insurer determines your injury was not covered, you can pursue your claim in a workers’ compensation court.
Workers’ compensation covers medical costs and lost wages. If and when you return to work, if you are unable to earn as much as you were before because of your injury, you will be able to recover for that, as well. But workers' compensation does not cover pain and suffering.
Workers’ compensation does not assign blame. Your recovery will not be reduced by your comparative fault, as it would be in traditional personal injury case, unless you injured yourself intentionally or were under the influence of an intoxicating substance when you were injured.
Sometimes a work-related injury is actually caused by the negligence of a third-party, i.e., a party other than your employer:
Example: There is a dangerous condition on the property of your workplace (ice, slippery floors, holes, broken stairs) that is caused or not attended to by a property manager rather than by your employer. You slip and fall, injuring yourself.
Example: You are using a piece of equipment that malfunctions, and the malfunction is the fault of a third party. You are injured by the malfunctioning product.
In such cases, you may be able to recover against the third-party for their negligence in causing your injury. To do so, you would file a separate negligence lawsuit against the third-party. In a third-party suit, you may recover for non-economic damage (i.e., pain and suffering/loss of enjoyment of life) that isn’t covered by workers’ compensation. Your comparative fault will also be considered and may reduce your recovery.
No. The purpose of tort law is to make you whole, not to enrich you unjustly. If you recover damages from a third-party that have already been paid by workers’ compensation insurance benefits, the workers’ compensation insurer will seek to be repaid out of your third-party recovery.
Under New York’s Labor Law 240 and 241, construction workers injured as a result of code violations or in scaffold or other elevation support-related accidents may recover for workers’ compensation and may also recover against third-party contractors that had responsibility for safety equipment and/or for ensuring adherence to safety codes. In such cases, there is often strict liability for damages. That means you do not have to prove the third-party was at fault (negligent) in your accident.
