LOIS Attorney Wins Argument Resulting in Disallowance of a Construction Claim Involving Two Claimants

New York Workers’ Compensation construction accidents are sometimes found to be outright false or fabricated in an effort to bolster the claim. LOIS Associate Attorney Meisha Powell dealt with a case where two Claimants who were on the job site for a few days and who testified to several versions of the incident. The Law Judge assessed the credibility of the Claimant during a two-day trial and found there to be no credible causal relationship, disallowing this claim. In this case, the two Claimants alleged being injured from a workplace accident where one fell from a bucket, knocking the other from a ladder. Attorney Powell and her team combed the medical records and statements from this alleged accident and realized, early on, that the descriptions varied from report to report. In some reporting, they were both standing on a ladder, and other reports indicated that one was on a ladder and the other was on a bucket. There was even testimony that two buckets were stacked on top of each other. Attorney Powell was able to use aggressive cross-examination to call into question the credibility of one of the Claimants, highlighting that his response cut against the numerous discrepancies in the record. Powell also questioned the Claimant as to why his statements did not reflect what he told the doctor, what he testified to the Judge, what he alleged in the third-party civil suit, and what he said in his prior testimony regarding the very same accident. Rightfully, the Law Judge saw through the inconsistencies, found the Claimant to be incredible and unequivocally disallowed the claim.