Hurt Lifting at Work in New York, and the Herniated Discs Showed Up Later

Attorney Answer

A New York injury at work is a Workers' Compensation claim first, and it carries two separate clocks — one for telling your employer, one for filing the claim — each with exceptions written into the statute itself. Do not treat either as closed before someone has looked at your facts.

The notice clock is Workers' Compensation Law § 18: "Notice of an injury or death for which compensation is payable under this chapter shall be given to the employer within thirty days after the accident causing such injury, and also in case of the death of the employee resulting from such injury, within thirty days after such death." That section does not stop there. It goes on to provide that a failure to give notice may be excused by the Board where notice could not for some sufficient reason have been given, or where the employer or the supervisor in charge at the place of the accident had knowledge of the accident, or where the employer has not been prejudiced; and it provides that the employer and the carrier are deemed to have waived the objection unless they raise it at the first hearing at which all parties are present and the claimant testifies. A missed thirty days is a question, not an answer.

The claim clock is Workers' Compensation Law § 28: "The right to claim compensation under this chapter shall be barred, except as hereinafter provided, unless within two years after the accident, or if death results therefrom within two years after such death, a claim for compensation shall be filed with the chairman, but the employer and insurance carrier shall be deemed to have waived the bar of the statute unless the objection to the failure to file the claim within two years is raised on the first hearing on such claim at which all parties in interest are present." The same section treats disablement from an occupational disease differently, allowing a claim filed after two years where it is filed within two years after disablement and after the claimant knew or should have known that the disease was due to the nature of the employment. Whether a back that failed while lifting is treated as an accident or as a condition that developed out of the work is a classification question with real consequences for timing, and it is decided on the medical proof and the work history, not on how the injury felt at the time.

Two things in your account matter to both clocks. Both sections run from the date of the accident, and you have given a range of about two years — so pinning down the best date you can support, and any document that fixes it, is the most valuable thing you can do. And the herniations at L4-L5 were confirmed after you left the job: later medical proof can support an earlier accident, but it does not move the date the statutes run from.

Nothing in your account names anyone outside the employment. If some other person or company contributed — defective equipment, another contractor on site — that would be a separate civil action on the three-year period in CPLR 214(5), with fault under CPLR 1411(a), which diminishes damages in proportion to a claimant's share rather than barring recovery.

What you can do

1. Write down the narrowest date or date range you can support for the lifting incident, and the name of the co-worker who was lifting with you.

2. Collect anything created at the time — an incident report, a text, an email to a supervisor, a clinic note — that shows the employer knew.

3. Gather the MRI report naming L4-L5 and every treatment record since, in date order.

4. Ask a New York workers' compensation attorney about the excuse provisions in § 18 and the waiver clause in § 28 before you accept that any deadline has passed.

5. Ask that attorney whether your condition should be presented as an accident or as an occupational disease; the timing rules differ.

6. Ask whether anyone other than the employer or a co-worker had a hand in the injury.

⏱ Time limits apply. Workers' Compensation Law § 18 requires notice to the employer within thirty days after the accident, and § 28 bars a claim not filed within two years after the accident — both keyed to the date of the lifting incident, not to the date the herniation was diagnosed. Any civil claim against someone outside the employment would run on the three-year period in CPLR 214(5), also from the accident. Each of those sections carries exceptions and waivers that turn on facts this page cannot see, so have a New York attorney fix your dates; this page does not calculate one.