If you were hurt on the job in New York, a NYC workers' compensation lawyer can protect the benefits you are entitled to and find out whether you also have a second case worth far more. Compensation covers your treatment and part of your wages no matter who caused the accident, which is why it is the first thing to open after an injury.
It is also a system built around forms, deadlines, and a carrier that is looking for reasons to stop paying. Most injured workers do not lose benefits because they were not hurt. They lose them because of a missed appointment, an unanswered form, or an examination they walked into unprepared. Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower handles both the compensation claim and the separate injury case that often runs alongside it. Below are the questions injured workers ask our workers' compensation attorneys most.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
Almost every employee in New York is covered, and coverage does not depend on fault. You can recover benefits even if the accident was your own mistake, and you do not have to prove your employer did anything wrong.
Coverage extends to injuries from a single accident, injuries that develop over time from repeated work, conditions caused by exposure at work, and injuries that happen while traveling for work. Part time workers, seasonal workers, and workers paid in cash are generally covered as well.
Your authorized medical care for the work injury is paid for, with no deductible or copayment. Treatment follows a set of state guidelines, and care outside those guidelines requires a request and approval, which is one of the places claims stall.
If you cannot work, or can only work reduced hours, you receive a portion of your average weekly wage based on your degree of disability, subject to a maximum weekly amount that the state adjusts each year. Your average weekly wage is calculated from your earnings before the injury, and getting that number right matters for every week of benefits that follows.
When treatment reaches the point where further improvement is not expected, you may be entitled to an additional award. Injuries to arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, eyes, and hearing are compensated through a schedule award based on the percentage of function lost. Injuries to the back, neck, and other body systems are handled differently, based on the degree of permanent disability and its effect on your ability to work.
Where a worker is killed, benefits are paid to a surviving spouse and dependent children, along with funeral expenses.
This is the part injured workers are rarely told. Compensation pays nothing for pain and suffering, nothing for the loss of what you can no longer do outside of work, and only a fraction of your actual lost income, capped regardless of what you earned.
For a worker with a serious injury, the gap between what compensation pays and what the injury actually cost can be enormous. Closing that gap is what a third party case does.
Usually not your employer. In exchange for benefits that come regardless of fault, New York generally bars a claim against your own employer and coworkers.
That bar stops there. If someone other than your employer contributed to the accident, you can bring a separate injury case against them, and that case reaches everything compensation does not. On a construction site that often includes the property owner and the general contractor, whose responsibility for height related hazards under New York's Scaffold Law does not depend on fault at all. In other settings it can include a driver, a property owner, an equipment manufacturer, a maintenance company, or another contractor.
Those cases are frequently worth many times the compensation claim, and many injured workers never learn they had one.
This is the mistake that costs injured workers the most, and it happens quietly.
When you have an open compensation claim and you also settle a third party case, the compensation carrier's written consent is generally required. Settling without it can end your future benefits, including the medical treatment you were relying on for the rest of your life. Workers who resolve an injury case on their own, or with a lawyer who does not handle both sides, discover this only afterward.
The carrier also has a lien on the recovery for what it has paid out. That amount is negotiable, and reducing it is real money. Running both claims together, with the lien and the consent handled deliberately, is the difference between a settlement that helps and one that quietly costs you.
Yes, and it is worth knowing exactly how, because each method has an answer.
Two deadlines matter and they are different. You are generally required to notify your employer in writing within thirty days of the accident, and to file your claim with the state within two years. For a condition that developed over time or from exposure, the two year period generally runs from when you knew or should have known it was related to your work.
Telling a supervisor in the hallway is not the same as written notice, and it is the most common gap in these files. Put it in writing, keep a copy, and do it now rather than after you see how the injury develops.
A third party case runs on its own separate deadline, generally three years, and much shorter where a public agency is involved.
Ask anyway, because these situations are more often covered than workers assume.
Immigration status does not disqualify an injured worker from workers' compensation benefits in New York, and it does not affect a third party injury claim. Being paid in cash or off the books does not eliminate coverage either, though it can make proving your wage rate harder, which is where pay records, texts, and coworker testimony matter.
Being labeled an independent contractor is not the end of the question. What controls is how the work was actually performed and controlled, not what a company called you, and workers classified as contractors are regularly found to be covered employees.
Falls from heights, ladders, and scaffolds, being struck by falling material or equipment, machinery and power tool injuries, electrical injuries and burns, motor vehicle collisions while working, lifting injuries and back injuries, slips and trips, assaults at work, and injuries to healthcare, warehouse, delivery, restaurant, and building service workers.
Conditions that build up over time are covered too, including repetitive strain injuries, hearing loss, and illnesses caused by exposure to dust, chemicals, and other hazards at work.
Disputes in these claims are decided by a judge at the Workers' Compensation Board rather than in an ordinary courtroom. Hearings are usually short and focused on one issue: whether the claim is accepted, what your degree of disability is, whether a treatment should be authorized, or what a permanent award should be.
They are also where an unrepresented worker is most disadvantaged, because the carrier appears with a lawyer and with its own medical report every time. Decisions can be appealed, and the medical evidence that supports your position has to be developed before the hearing rather than after it.
Retaliating against a worker for filing a workers' compensation claim is prohibited in New York. That does not stop it from happening, and when it does it is worth documenting carefully, including the timing, what was said, and any change in your hours or assignments after you reported the injury.
Fear of retaliation is the most common reason workers delay reporting, and delay is what damages both the compensation claim and the injury case.
Through workers' compensation: authorized medical treatment, a portion of lost wages, permanent awards for lasting loss of function, and death benefits for a family.
Through a third party case: full past and future lost earnings, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, future medical care beyond what compensation authorizes, home and attendant care where a serious injury requires it, a spouse's claim for loss of services, and, in a fatal case, the losses a family carries forward through a wrongful death claim.
No. You pay nothing up front, and the first consultation is free and carries no obligation. Our personal injury claims are handled on a contingency fee basis, so there is no fee unless there is a recovery.
Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower runs both tracks so nothing falls between them. Our workers' compensation lawyers:
Our workers' compensation lawyers prepare the injury case as if it will be tried, because that is what makes an insurer take a working person's losses seriously. A settlement on the right number is welcome. A settlement that shortchanges what the injury cost you is not one this firm accepts just because it comes early.
If you were hurt at work, the benefits claim and the injury case run on different clocks, and the evidence for the second one is disappearing now. The consultation is free, and Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower does not get paid unless you do.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
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