As we explained in our case summary, the question in this case was whether, after an amendment to the Workers’ Compensation Law (WCL), a claimant classified as having a permanent partial disability was required to prove “labor market attachment”–basically, that she continued to seek work–both before and after her classification as disabled. In a unanimous decision, the Court (Rivera, J.), held that the WCL amendment eliminated the requirement to show labor-market attachment post-classification but not pre-classification.
Among other things, workers’ compensation awards provide wage replacement benefits for workers whose earning capacity had been reduced due to a workplace injury. This case involved a type of injury called a non-schedule permanent partial disability. A worker with such an injury is entitled to wage replacement benefits, but only if she can establish that her lost earning capacity was caused by her injury, not her post-injury unwillingness to work. This showing of willingness to work is referred to as labor market attachment. In Matter of Zamora v. New York Neurologic Assoc., 19 N.Y.3d 186 (2012), the Court held that the Worker’s Compensation Board may, but is not required to, infer labor market attachment for a worker who voluntarily retired after her injury. Then, in 2017, the Legislature amended the Workers’ Compensation Law to provide that a worker is entitled to wage replacement benefits without having “to demonstrate ongoing attachment to the labor market.”
The worker in this case was awarded benefits for a non-schedule permanent partial disability after an administrative proceeding in which the Board did not require her to establish labor market attachment, either pre- or post classification. The Appellate Division held that the 2017 amendment eliminated such a worker’s obligation to show labor market attachment altogether, and thus confirmed the Board’s decision. But the Court disagreed. The 2017 amendment only eliminated the requirement to show labor market attachment in the period after the worker was classified as disabled; in the period between the injury and classification, a worker was still required to show labor market attachment.
This was where things got a little quirky. In the Court of Appeals, the Board changed its position and conceded that it had departed from its administrative practice by not requiring the worker to show labor market attachment in this case. As the Board explained, its practice was to infer labor market attachment–as permitted by Zamora–in all cases unless labor market attachment was disputed by the worker’s employer. Here, the issue was disputed, and yet the Board did not require the worker to make the required labor-market-attachment showing. Worse, the Board gave no reason for this departure from its administrative practice. The Court thus vacated the Board’s decision and remanded the case to the Board to adjudicate the case according to its practice.
Return to the case page for Matter of O’Donnell v. Erie County.