New York’s highest court said the State Workers’ Compensation Board was not required to consider the prevalence of COVID-19 in the workplace when it rejected pandemic-related stress claims.
Three transit workers and a teacher filed workers’ compensation claims for post-traumatic stress disorder from workplace exposure to COVID-19 during the early days of the pandemic.
The State Workers’ Compensation Board held that the workers failed to demonstrate they were exposed to greater stress than their colleagues and therefore did not establish the accidental nature of their injuries.
The appellate division reversed, finding the board failed to consider the particular vulnerabilities of each claimant.
The appeals court also said the board improperly applied disparate burdens for people alleging a mental health condition from having to work during the pandemic and people seeking benefits for contracting COVID-19.
Workers can prove they got COVID-19 at work by demonstrating either a specific exposure to the virus that causes the disease, or that the prevalence of COVID-19 in the workplace created “an elevated risk of exposure constituting an extraordinary event,” the court said.
That same rule must apply to mental stress claims. A divided New York Court of Appeals disagreed. Claimants’ particular vulnerabilities are immaterial to the merits of their claims, the high court said Tuesday.
The court also said the board didn’t adopt disparate burdens for physical injury and mental stress claims arising from COVID-19.
At the time the board rendered its decisions, stress injuries were considered accidental only if the worker established that they experienced greater stress than other similarly situated workers. An injury must be accidental and arise from employment to be compensable.
Because the board concluded the three transit workers and the teacher failed to prove they were exposed to more stress than other workers and their injuries were not accidental, there was no need for the board to consider whether the claims arose from employment.
“To put it another way, evidence of COVID-19’s prevalence in the workplace does not relieve a claimant of the burden to establish that the injury was accidental which, in cases of emotional stress-induced psychological injury, has involved a demonstration by the claimant of stress greater than the stress experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment,” the court said. “Here, substantial evidence supports the board’s determination that the stress of workplace exposure experienced by claimants was comparable to the stress experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment during the COVID-19 pandemic.”