"Will Not Be Disturbed": How the Third Department Talked Itself Out of Reading Two Statutes

Workers’ Compensation Defense Playbook Decoded — Thursday, June 11, 2026

Start with the two people.

Charles Williams was a train conductor. On March 15, 2021, a passenger fell between the cars of his train and died. Williams was ordered to walk hundreds of frightened riders to the back of the train so they could be evacuated onto a “rescue train” — which then ran over the body. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jennifer Croom was a correction sergeant at Albion. One of the incarcerated women had a medical emergency. Croom got her to the hospital unit and, with others, did CPR and used a defibrillator as the woman died in front of her. Croom had known this woman for more than a decade, going back to a juvenile facility where they first crossed paths. She, too, was diagnosed with PTSD, and she stopped working that November.

Two workers. Two deaths. Two diagnoses no one in either case seriously contested. And on June 11, the Appellate Division, Third Department, told both of them the same thing: this is just part of the job, nothing unusual happened to you, claim disallowed.

If that result makes your stomach turn, hold onto the feeling — but it is not actually the part of these decisions that should worry you most. The cruelty here is mostly the old standard doing what it was built to do. The real story is what the Court did with the law — and how willing this Court has become to look at a legal question, announce that it is a legal question, and then hand the answer to the Workers’ Compensation Board anyway.

Let me decode it.

The standard the Legislature already killed

For years, a PTSD or stress claim in New York lived or died on one sentence: the stress you suffered had to be “greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment.” Read that with Williams and Croom in mind. A conductor is “similarly situated” to every other conductor — and trains, the carriers will tell you, sometimes hit people. A correction sergeant is “similarly situated” to every other sergeant — and people, the carriers will tell you, sometimes die in custody. Under that test, the more routinely horrifying your job is, the less protection you get when the horror finally breaks you. That is not a bug the defense bar stumbled into. It is the whole machine.

The Legislature finally agreed it was indefensible. In 2025 it added Workers’ Compensation Law § 10 (3) (c), which bars the Board from “disallow[ing] a claim” for PTSD, acute stress disorder, or major depressive disorder “upon a factual finding that the stress was not greater than that which usually occurs in the normal work environment.” The elected branch looked at the “similarly situated worker” test, called it wrong, and abolished it.

Here is what a casual reader misses: the Third Department applied that dead standard anyway — to both claimants — more than a year after the fix became law. And it had a different escape hatch in each case.

Croom: how to admit the rule, then route around it

In Croom, the Court met the new statute head-on, because Croom’s lawyer teed it up properly and asked for a remittal so the Board could apply § 10 (3) (c). The Court said no: the statute is prospective only, Croom’s Board decision was “final and conclusive” back in October 2024, and the Legislature built in a gap before the effective date that signals it did not mean to reach back. Cite Jeter v Poole, cite Deutsch v Catherwood, done.

You can argue about that — there is a respectable retroactivity analysis in there, and I am not going to pretend Jeter doesn’t exist. But notice the choice. The Court knows the Legislature has declared this standard unjust. It knows the only thing between Croom and the new rule is a calendar. Handed a discretionary off-ramp — remittal, which courts grant routinely when the law shifts under a pending appeal — it picks the reading that keeps the repealed standard alive for one more worker. The Court was not compelled to be this small. It chose to be.

Then comes the part that should bother every practitioner in this state.

Croom also argued she fit the existing first-responder exception in § 10 (3) (b) — the provision that shields “a police officer or firefighter … or emergency medical technician, paramedic, or other person certified to provide medical care in emergencies, or [an] emergency dispatcher” from exactly this “no worse than your coworkers” defense. She did CPR. She ran a defibrillator. She is trained and expected to do those things in emergencies. “Other person certified to provide medical care in emergencies” is not an exotic reading of those words. It is what they say.

Now watch the Court’s own framing, because this is the whole ballgame. It writes — correctly — that the Board’s view of § 10 (3) (b) is “not entitled to deference [b]ecause the issue presented is one of pure statutory interpretation.” Good. That is black-letter law. When the question is what a statute means, the Board does not get the home-field advantage of “substantial evidence” or “reasonableness”; the courts decide, fresh. The Third Department says so out loud, citing Sanchez and Walsh.

Having announced it owes the Board nothing, the Court lands exactly where the Board did. It reaches for ejusdem generis and expressio unius — the canons you pick up when you want a list to stay short — to hold that a sergeant certified in and actually performing emergency lifesaving is somehow not “certified to provide medical care in emergencies,” because the catch-all must be cabined by “emergency medical technician” and “paramedic” sitting in front of it. A person who does CPR in an emergency is, the Court says, not covered “without more.”

To be fair to the panel: there is a serious textual argument that the catch-all reaches only EMS-style certifications, not every employee with a CPR card. If the opinion stopped there, it would be defensible-if-grudging. But two things curdle it.

First, the Court reached for every canon of narrow construction and not one canon of broad construction — and the Workers’ Compensation Law has a famous one. This statute is remedial. It is supposed to be construed liberally in favor of coverage, with genuine doubts resolved for the injured worker, not for the carrier. That is not a slogan; it is the rule of decision in this field. It appears nowhere in Croom. When a court says it owes the Board no deference on a pure question of law, then quietly selects the interpretive tools that reproduce the Board’s result while ignoring the one canon that points the other way, “no deference” starts to look like set dressing.

Second — and this is the part that makes you laugh so you don’t cry — the Court closes the loop by citing a Board decision for the proposition that correction officers aren’t covered. So on the issue where the Court swore the Board gets no deference, the Board got the last word, the Board’s reasoning, and a Board citation in support. “Not entitled to deference,” indeed.

Williams: deference where the law lives

If Croom is deference smuggled in under a denial that there’s any deference, Williams is deference worn openly on a question that was never the Board’s to decide alone.

The fight in Williams was about timing — did the employer controvert the claim in time, or blow the clock and lose its defenses? That kind of question decides cases before anyone reaches the medicine. And the facts are a small masterpiece of the playbook this newsletter exists to decode. The Transit Authority filed its First Report of Injury marked “Medical Only” and “With Liability.” It then paid Williams indemnity benefits “without liability” for two weeks, suspended them, and only on May 7 — well past the 25-day window in Workers’ Compensation Law § 25 (2) (b) — filed its formal notice of controversy raising every defense in the book. Williams’s lawyers made two clean legal arguments: that checking “With Liability” was a binding acceptance the employer couldn’t take back, and that the 25-day clock had run.

The Board said no on both. Here is the move. Because the claim was never “indexed,” the Board reasoned, the 25-day clock in § 25 (2) (b) never started — and the employer had separately bought itself a full year to controvert under § 21-a (1) by making those “without liability” payments. So the 25-day rule the Legislature wrote is satisfied by simply never triggering it, and a one-year runway appears in its place. Williams’s lawyers said the obvious thing: that reading lets an employer stretch its time to fight a claim more or less indefinitely while paying a little “without liability” money to keep the meter from starting, which nullifies the 25-day limit the statute plainly imposes.

Maybe that argument wins, maybe it loses. But look at how the Court resolved it. On the “With Liability” waiver question, it held the Board’s conclusion “was reasonable and will not be disturbed.” On the interplay of §§ 21-a, 25 (2) (b), and 12 NYCRR 300.37 (c) — three pieces of written law and a regulation — it deferred to the Board’s reading rather than deciding, itself, what those provisions mean together.

That is the move to circle in red. Whether an employer has waived its defenses, and whether a 25-day statutory deadline can be dissolved by a regulation about indexing, are questions of statutory and regulatory interpretation. They are Croom’s “pure statutory interpretation” in a different costume. The Court that, on the very same day, in the companion case it cross-cites, lectured us that the Board gets no deference on what a statute means, turned around in Williams and let the Board’s reading of three interlocking provisions stand because it was “reasonable” and would “not be disturbed.”

Substantial-evidence deference is for facts — did this accident happen, was this doctor credible, how bad is the disability. Nobody quarrels with that; the Board watched the witnesses and we didn’t. But “what does § 25 (2) (b) require, and can a regulation about indexing erase it” is not a fact. It is law. And on law, deference isn’t humility. It’s abdication.

The pattern — and why it matters to you

Put the two side by side and the through-line is unmistakable. When deferring to the Board produced the carrier-friendly result, the Court deferred — openly in Williams, in substance in Croom even while reciting that it wasn’t. When the worker needed the Court to actually exercise the fresh review it admits it owes on questions of law, the Court found a canon, a calendar, or a “reasonableness” formula to hand the question back to the agency that had already ruled against the worker.

I spent years on the other side of this. I ran the Workers’ Compensation Division defending the City; I know this playbook because I used to call the plays. The single most valuable thing you can hand a defense lawyer is a court that treats legal questions as if they were factual ones — because “substantial evidence” and “will not be disturbed” are how you win without ever having to be right. Deference on the facts is the system working. Deference on the law is the system quietly deciding it would rather not.

The cruel epilogue is that the Legislature already saw the underlying injustice and fixed it. The “similarly situated worker” test that buried Williams and Croom is gone. Even the Court of Appeals, in McLaurin, now describes that standard in the past tense — what the law “was considered” to require “at the time of the Board’s decision.” Both of these workers had the bad luck of a Board decision dated just before the fix, and a Court willing to read every timing, waiver, and canon question in the direction that keeps the old, repudiated rule on its feet a little longer.

For the injured worker

If you are carrying a PTSD, acute-stress, or depression claim from something that happened at work, three things to take from this:

The law changed in your favor — but the date of your Board decision matters enormously. Workers’ Compensation Law § 10 (3) (c) now forbids the Board from throwing out a covered PTSD claim just because your stress was “no worse” than your coworkers’. Williams and Croom lost on timing, not on the merits of that fix. If your claim is current, this change is a powerful tool. Do not let anyone tell you the “similarly situated worker” line is still the last word.

“It’s just part of your job” is an argument, not a fact of nature. The carrier will say a conductor should expect train strikes, a corrections officer should expect deaths, a nurse should expect codes. That framing is exactly what the new statute was written to defeat for covered workers. Document what made this event different and what it did to you.

Get the timing analysis done early. Whether a notice of controversy was timely, whether a claim was “indexed,” whether § 21-a or § 25 bought the carrier extra time — these are the technical fights that decide cases before the medicine is ever weighed. They are also exactly the kind of thing a New York workers’ compensation attorney who has worked the other side of the table is built to spot.

You can read how I represent injured workers across Brooklyn and the rest of New York City, and browse past issues of this newsletter at the blog index. Two weeks ago I wrote about how a cover-sheet technicality nearly sank a claim in Price v. Premium Brands, which pairs well with this one if you want a second helping of how procedure gets used against workers.

For the claimant attorney

A few things worth pocketing from these two.

Croom is now your cleanest cite that § 10 (3) (b) is a question of pure statutory interpretation entitled to no Board deference (Sanchez; Walsh) — useful leverage even though the panel then declined to act like it. Preserve the remedial-construction argument the Court ignored: the catch-all “person certified to provide medical care in emergencies” should be read with the liberal-construction canon, not buried under ejusdem generis. Build the record on the worker’s actual certifications and emergency duties so “without more” has less room to operate.

On § 10 (3) (c) retroactivity, Croom is the first reasoned Third Department treatment, and it is squarely prospective-only on a “final and conclusive” Board decision (Jeter v Poole). The seam is the discretionary remittal: where the appeal was pending when the statute took effect, press McMillan v Town of New Castle and the equities of a law the Legislature passed precisely to stop this result.

On Williams, do not let the “reasonable / will not be disturbed” framing launder a legal question. Whether checking “With Liability” waives the right to controvert, and whether 12 NYCRR 300.37 (c) can dissolve the § 25 (2) (b) 25-day clock via the indexing fiction while § 21-a (1) supplies a year, is statutory interpretation — Croom’s own no-deference rule should govern it. Both issues are pure law and both deserve a leave application to the Court of Appeals.

That’s it for this week. If you know someone living through a PTSD or stress claim right now — especially anyone who’s been told the trauma was “just part of the job” — forward this to them. That is the whole point of this thing.

— Levi

Nothing here is legal advice. The timing of your Board decision and the exact wording of these statutes can change everything; talk to a lawyer who handles these claims.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get New York workers’ compensation for PTSD from a traumatic event at work? Yes. PTSD, acute stress disorder, and major depressive disorder from work-related stress can be compensable in New York. As of 2025, Workers’ Compensation Law § 10 (3) (c) bars the Workers’ Compensation Board from disallowing a covered claim solely on a finding that the stress “was not greater than that which usually occurs in the normal work environment.” The timing of your Board decision and the specific facts still matter, so consult a workers’ compensation attorney.

What was the “similarly situated worker” standard, and did New York change it? For years, an emotional-stress psychological injury was considered accidental only if the worker showed the workplace stress was greater than what other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment. New York changed this with Workers’ Compensation Law § 10 (3) (c), which prohibits the Board from disallowing covered PTSD, acute stress disorder, and major depressive disorder claims on that basis. The Court of Appeals in McLaurin now describes the older standard in the past tense.

Does the new PTSD law apply if my Board decision is from before it took effect? Not automatically. In Matter of Croom v Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (3d Dept, June 11, 2026), the Third Department held that § 10 (3) (c) is prospective only and does not apply to a Board decision that was already “final and conclusive” before the statute’s effective date. Whether the new law reaches your claim depends heavily on your timeline, so have an attorney review the dates.

Are correction officers covered by the first-responder PTSD exception in § 10 (3) (b)? In Croom, the Third Department held that a correction sergeant who performs CPR is not, “without more,” an “other person certified to provide medical care in emergencies” under Workers’ Compensation Law § 10 (3) (b), and therefore not within that first-responder exception. The decision turned on canons of narrow statutory construction. A claimant in this position should preserve arguments based on the remedial nature of the Workers’ Compensation Law and their specific certifications and emergency duties.

The Board denied my PTSD claim. What should I do? Do not assume the denial is the final word. The 2025 amendment, the timing of your decision, and the specific way the Board applied the law may all create grounds for review or appeal. Speak promptly with a New York workers’ compensation attorney — administrative review and appeal to the Appellate Division are where many of these cases are actually decided.

Case Citations: Matter of Williams v New York City Transit Authority, CV-24-0860 (3d Dept June 11, 2026); Matter of Croom v New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, CV-24-1886 (3d Dept June 11, 2026).