Legal Question in Workers Comp in New York

Re: Insurance carrier taking my awards

The comp carrier is entitled to recoup an overpayment.Sometimes the carrier pays too much and creates an overpayment.

As far as obtaining an attorney... In your case I would advise against it until the carrier has recouped the overpayment. You could explain the situation to the judge and let them figure out the overpayment and the mathematics behind the carrier's error.

Re: Insurance carrier taking my awards

Since the carrier's alleged credit jumped from $6,740 to $23,872 it probably means one of two things. One, you were awarded a schedule loss of use for an injury to an extremity. In which case, the money they paid you at the time of closure was supposed to last you for any future lost time, unless the case is reopened due to a change in your condition. In that case, the credit should have been what you received at the time of closure plus your attorney's fee. The second possibility is there may have been periods in the past where they voluntarily paid you and either by accident or by design, it turns out at a later hearing that those periods were never actually award at a hearing. In that case, the carrier looks at the decisions filed by the Board, adds up the amounts awarded and then looks at what they already paid you. If it doesn't add up, they claim an overpayment. To fix that problem, you have to go back in time and prove you had medical evidence that you were not working and were disabled for all of those periods of time even though the comp carrier paid you voluntarily.