Matter of McLaurin v. NYC Transit Authority: Reaffirming the “Normal Work Environment” Standard for Psychological COVID‑19 Stress Claims

I. Introduction

Matter of McLaurin v. New York City Transit Authority, together with the consolidated appeals involving Sheldon Matthews, Melissa Anderson, and Bolot Djanuzako (2025 NY Slip Op 06529, Nov. 24, 2025), is the New York Court of Appeals’ first major engagement with workers’ compensation claims for purely psychological injuries stemming from workplace exposure to COVID‑19.

Four claimants – three transit workers employed by or through the New York City Transit Authority and one public school teacher employed by the City of Yonkers – sought benefits under the Workers' Compensation Law (WCL) for mental health conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), allegedly caused by having to work in person during the early stages of the COVID‑19 pandemic.

The Workers’ Compensation Board (Board) disallowed the claims, finding that the stress experienced by each claimant was comparable to that experienced by similarly situated co‑workers in the same period, and therefore did not meet the threshold for a compensable “accident” under New York law. The Appellate Division, Third Department, reversed, holding that the Board:

failed to consider each claimant’s “particular vulnerabilities”, supposedly required by the Court of Appeals’ earlier decision in Wolfe v. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., and
improperly imposed “disparate burdens” on claimants with psychological COVID‑19 claims as compared to those who physically contracted COVID‑19, by declining to apply the Board’s COVID “prevalence rule” to psychological claims.

The Court of Appeals (Troutman, J., writing for the majority) reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the Board’s decisions. In doing so, the Court:

clarified the meaning of Wolfe and held that the Board is not required to examine each claimant’s subjective vulnerabilities when deciding whether there was a compensable “accident”;
reaffirmed the long‑standing rule that, for stress‑induced psychological injuries, a claimant must show stress greater than that experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment at the time;
refused to extend the Board’s COVID‑19 “prevalence rule” – developed for claims based on physical infection – to psychological injury claims; and
acknowledged that the Legislature has now amended WCL § 10 to relax this “greater stress” requirement going forward for PTSD, acute stress disorder, and major depressive disorder, but held that the amendment does not retroactively affect these cases.

A partial dissent by Halligan, J. (joined by Chief Judge Wilson and Judge Rivera), agrees that the Appellate Division misread Wolfe and misused the “prevalence rule,” but would have remitted for the Board to reconsider the claims under a more expansive, temporally framed interpretation of the “normal work environment” test, in light of the extraordinary nature of the early pandemic.

II. Summary of the Opinion

A. The Majority Holding (Troutman, J.)

The Court’s core holdings can be summarized as follows:

No obligation to consider “particular vulnerabilities” when defining a compensable accident
The Appellate Division read Wolfe v. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., 36 NY2d 505 (1975), as requiring the Board to assess each claimant’s unique psychological makeup (“particular vulnerabilities”) when deciding whether workplace stress qualifies as an “accident.” The Court of Appeals rejects that reading.
The expression “determinative factor” does not refer to a factor in a legal test for determining whether an accident occurred but instead to a factor in a psychophysiological process that determines what type of injury results from exposure to emotional stress.

In other words, Wolfe stands for the equivalence of psychological and physical injuries once a compensable accident is established; it does not alter what counts as an accident or require individualized vulnerability analysis.
Reaffirmation of the “similarly situated workers / normal work environment” standard for psychological injuries
At the time of the Board’s decisions, emotional stress‑induced psychological injury could be considered an “accident” only if:
the claimant established that the stress they experienced in the workplace was “greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment” (quoting Matter of Lozowski v Wiz, 134 AD3d 1177 [3d Dept 2015]).

The Board found, and the Court holds that substantial evidence supports the finding, that each claimant’s stress from COVID‑19 exposure was comparable to that of similarly situated co‑workers in their normal pandemic work environment. Accordingly, the injuries were non‑accidental under then‑existing law.
Distinct elements: “Accident” vs. “Arising out of and in the course of employment”
The Court emphasizes that a compensable claim requires both:
- an “accidental” injury (WCL § 2(7)), and
- an injury that “arose out of and in the course of employment” (WCL § 10(1)).
The Board’s “prevalence rule” – which allowed contraction of COVID‑19 to be treated as work‑related if there was either a specific workplace exposure or sufficient workplace prevalence to constitute an “elevated risk” – speaks only to this second element (causal connection to employment), not to whether there has been an “accident” for psychological claims.
No extension of the COVID‑19 “prevalence rule” to psychological claims
The Appellate Division had required the Board to apply the COVID “prevalence rule” (developed for physical COVID‑19 infection claims) to psychological claims arising from fear and stress of exposure. The Court of Appeals rejects this:
To put it another way, evidence of COVID‑19’s prevalence in the workplace does not relieve a claimant of the burden to establish that the injury was accidental which, in cases of emotional stress‑induced psychological injury, has involved a demonstration by the claimant of stress greater than the stress experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment.

Because the Board found no such greater stress, the psychological injuries were non‑accidental; the “prevalence rule” could not rescue these claims.
Legislative change: WCL § 10(3)(c) loosens the standard going forward
After the Appellate Division decisions, the Legislature amended WCL § 10 to add subdivision (3)(c), providing that the Board:
“may not disallow 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 Court holds that this amendment does not apply retroactively to these claims, and the claimants did not argue otherwise. The majority notes that the new standard is “more favorable than even the dissent’s novel standard” and suggests (in a footnote) that the amendment might even deprive the Board of authority to use the dissent’s proposed approach if the matter were remitted.
Deference to the Board and criticism of its litigation posture
The Court reiterates that the Board enjoys “very wide latitude” in determining what constitutes an accident. It also pointedly criticizes the Board’s unusual stance of declining to defend its own decisions on appeal:
It is peculiar practice indeed for the Board to disallow claims on the ground that the claimants’ conditions are nonaccidental but fail to take a position as to whether the appellate courts should uphold its own decisions. We do not encourage the practice.

B. The Partial Dissent (Halligan, J.)

Judge Halligan agrees that:

the Appellate Division misread Wolfe, and
the “prevalence rule” for physical infection does not apply to deciding whether psychological injuries are “accidental.”

However, she would still provide a path to benefits under the pre‑amendment law by re‑reading the “similarly situated / normal work environment” standard to account for the extraordinary, time‑bound nature of the early COVID‑19 pandemic:

She accepts that “exceptional” workplace stress is required, but would permit the Board to compare:
stress experienced by public‑facing workers during the early stages of the pandemic … with stress experienced by similarly situated workers in a normal work environment prior to the pandemic.
rather than comparing each claimant to peers laboring in the same extraordinary conditions.
She draws support from Schechter v. State Ins. Fund, 6 NY2d 506 (1959) – where a heart attack was deemed accidental because the claimant’s workload and stress over a seven‑week period were “unusual” compared to his own prior work – and from classic precedent on the compensatory purpose of workers’ compensation (Ives, Jensen).
She stresses the real and elevated health risks for essential workers, referencing empirical studies showing increased infection rates and high levels of personal bereavement among transit workers.
She would remit to the Board to decide whether the claimants’ stress during the early pandemic was “extraordinary” as compared with a pre‑pandemic “normal” environment and whether the psychological injuries are causally related to that stress.

Judge Halligan notes that the Board itself “does not object” to remittal and even urged the Court to hold that early‑pandemic COVID‑related stress could be compensable. She acknowledges the recent statutory amendment, but stresses that the Court’s task is to decide whether the Board’s original denials were erroneous under the law then in effect.

III. Precedents and Authorities Cited

A. Wolfe v. Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co., 36 NY2d 505 (1975)

Wolfe is the foundational New York case for compensability of psychological injuries. The Court there held that:

“psychological or nervous injury precipitated by psychic trauma is compensable to the same extent as physical injury.”

In explaining why psychology and physiology should be treated equivalently, the Court stated:

“The determinative factor is the particular vulnerability of an individual by virtue of his physical makeup. In a given situation one person may be susceptible to a heart attack while another may suffer a depressive reaction. In either case the result is the same – the individual is incapable of functioning properly because of an accident and should be compensated under the Workers’ Compensation Law.”

In the present case:

The Appellate Division had seized upon the phrase “determinative factor” and “particular vulnerability” to hold that the Board must take each claimant’s individual psychological susceptibility into account in deciding whether the stress they faced was a compensable accident.
The Court of Appeals majority firmly rejects this construction:
- The “determinative factor” language describes a medical/psychophysiological mechanism (why some people have heart attacks and others depression in response to the same trauma), not a legal test for what counts as an accident.
- Once a compensable accident is established, Wolfe prevents discrimination between physical and psychological manifestations; it does not lower or individualize the threshold for what constitutes an “accidental” event in the first place.

The clarified reading of Wolfe is a central doctrinal contribution of McLaurin: it confines Wolfe to its equality principle (psych vs. physical injury) and forecloses arguments that Wolfe requires a subjective, vulnerability‑based accident standard.

B. The “Normal Work Environment” Line: Santacroce, Leggio, Lozowski, Block, Kaliski

The requirement that psychological (or stress‑related physical) injuries be tied to stress “greater than that normally encountered in the work environment” traces back to:

Matter of Santacroce v. 40 W. 20th St., Inc., 9 AD2d 985 (3d Dept 1959), aff’d, 10 NY2d 855 (1961).
An elevator operator died of heart failure after an argument with a superintendent. The Appellate Division denied benefits because the dispute was not “so ‘exceptional’” as to constitute a compensable accident and:
“neither involve[d] nor induc[ed] emotional strain or tension greater than the countless differences and irritations to which all workers are occasionally subjected without untoward result.”
The Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion, effectively endorsing this “exceptional stress” / “normal work irritations” dichotomy.
Matter of Leggio v. Suffolk County Police Dept., 96 NY2d 846 (2001).
This Court described the relevant inquiry as whether stress was:
“more than that normally encountered in the workplace.”

McLaurin cites Leggio to reaffirm that standard and to show that the Board’s evaluation of COVID‑era stress as “normal” within that extremely stressful environment is supported by substantial evidence.
Matter of Lozowski v. Wiz, 134 AD3d 1177 (3d Dept 2015); Matter of Block v. Stroheim & Romann, 203 AD2d 833 (3d Dept 1994); Matter of Kaliski v. Fairchild Republic Co., 151 AD2d 867 (3d Dept 1989), aff’d for the reasons below, 76 NY2d 1002 (1990).
These decisions applied and elaborated the Santacroce/Leggio principle in various factual contexts, typically requiring that the claimant show:
- stress greater than that confronting similarly situated workers, and
- stress of a kind not ordinarily expected in the job’s normal environment.
McLaurin treats these cases as settling the pre‑amendment rule: emotional stress‑induced psychological injury is “accidental” only when the claimant’s work stress exceeds that of comparable workers in the ordinary course of that work.

Importantly, the majority applies this line of authority without treating the pandemic as categorically “extraordinary.” The relevant comparator remains “similarly situated workers in the normal work environment” – meaning, here, other transit workers and teachers working in person during the pandemic.

C. The COVID “Prevalence Rule”: Matter of Holder v. Office for People with Dev. Disabilities, 215 AD3d 1201 (3d Dept 2023)

The Appellate Division’s decision in Anderson v. City of Yonkers (227 AD3d 63 [3d Dept 2024]), which controlled the other appeals, referred to the Board’s so‑called “prevalence rule” for COVID‑19 infection claims, as summarized in Holder:

Claimants seeking benefits for contracting the virus may meet their burden to show that “an injury arose in the course of employment by demonstrating either a specific exposure to COVID‑19 or prevalence of COVID‑19 in the work environment so as to present an elevated risk of exposure constituting an extraordinary event.”

The Appellate Division required the Board to apply this same special rule to claims for psychological injuries arising from fear of exposure to COVID‑19. The Court of Appeals categorically rejects that requirement:

The “prevalence rule” addresses who bears the risk and burden of proof in showing that a physical disease (COVID‑19) was contracted “in the course of employment” – the causal link to employment element.
It does not alter the separate inquiry into whether an injury is “accidental.”
Psychological injury claims arising from generalized pandemic conditions still must satisfy the elevated stress/“similarly situated workers” test to be considered accidental.

This clarification sharply limits the reach of the COVID‑19 precedents. Psychological claims cannot simply ride on the coattails of rules tailored for physical infection.

D. Board Deference: Johannesen, Middleton

The majority reminds readers of the substantial deference owed to the Workers’ Compensation Board in classifying events as “accidents”:

Matter of Johannesen v. New York City Dept. of Hous. Preserv. & Dev., 84 NY2d 129, 134 (1994).
Matter of Middleton v. Coxsackie Correctional Facility, 38 NY2d 130, 135 (1975).

The Court quotes the principle that the Board enjoys “very wide latitude” in this domain and uses that deference to uphold the Board’s determination that the claimants’ stress was comparable to that of similarly situated workers and thus non‑accidental.

E. Other Authorities in the Dissent: Schechter, Ives, Jensen

Judge Halligan builds her alternative framework on:

Schechter v. State Ins. Fund, 6 NY2d 506 (1959).
There, an attorney’s heart attack was deemed accidental because, during a seven‑week period, his caseload and work intensity dramatically increased. The Court framed the accident in temporal terms: “unusual strain and exertion” over that span, compared with his normal workload, was sufficient, even though the type of work was the same.

Judge Halligan analogizes the early pandemic to the “seven‑week” period in Schechter: the work was of the same general type as before, but conditions (health risk) created an “unusual strain” compared to the pre‑pandemic baseline.
Ives v. South Buffalo Ry. Co., 201 NY 271 (1911); Matter of Jensen v. Southern Pac. Co., 215 NY 514 (1915).
Both cases frame the broader purpose of workers’ compensation as a no‑fault, compulsory insurance scheme replacing tort‑based litigation to ensure prompt and certain compensation for industrial injuries. The dissent uses this history to argue that compensating claimants for psychological injuries from extraordinary workplace health risks (like COVID‑19) best fulfills the WCL’s remedial purpose.

IV. Legal Reasoning in Depth

A. The Majority’s Doctrinal Structure

1. Two independent elements: “Accident” and “Arising out of and in the course of employment”

The majority’s analysis is structured around the long‑standing requirement that a compensable injury under the WCL must be:

an “accidental” injury within the meaning of WCL § 2(7), and
an injury that arises out of and in the course of employment under WCL § 10(1).

The Board’s COVID “prevalence rule” (developed in cases like Holder) speaks only to the second element – the work‑relatedness of contracting COVID‑19. It allows a claimant to prove that a COVID infection arose out of employment by showing:

a specific exposure to COVID‑19 in the workplace, or
that COVID‑19 was prevalent enough in the workplace to present an “elevated risk” compared to the general public.

But the psychological claims here fail at the first step: the Board found that there was no “accident” as defined by the case law on stress‑induced injuries. Therefore, any evidence that the claimants’ injuries arose “in the course of employment” is “of no moment.”

This strict separation of elements is central to the outcome: the Court refuses to let an expansive theory of work‑relatedness (prevalence) override a more restrictive conception of what counts as an “accident” in the context of stress‑induced psychological injury.

2. Objective stress comparison: “similarly situated workers in the normal work environment”

The majority expressly adopts, and applies, the Appellate Division’s pre‑existing doctrinal formula:

emotional stress-induced psychological injury was considered accidental only if the claimant established that the stress they experienced in the workplace was “greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment.”

Key features of this test as enforced here:

It is objective: the focus is not on the claimant’s internal psychological makeup, but on external conditions and whether those surpass what would normally be expected of similarly situated workers.
It is comparative: the baseline is the stress that “similarly situated workers” experience.
It is context‑dependent: the “normal work environment” is defined by the actual job conditions at the relevant time – here, the pandemic‑era working environment.

Applying this test, the majority accepts the Board’s fact‑finding that:

the stress of workplace exposure experienced by claimants was comparable to the stress experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment during the COVID‑19 pandemic.

Once that factual conclusion is accepted (under a deferential “substantial evidence” standard), the legal outcome is straightforward: the injuries are not “accidental” under then‑current law.

3. Non‑relevance of “particular vulnerabilities”

The Court’s reading of Wolfe underscores that:

Different workers may be differently vulnerable – some have heart attacks, some develop depression – but that goes to the type of injury following an accident, not to whether an accident occurred.
Consequently, the Board need not (and, implicitly, should not) alter the “accident” threshold based on an individual’s psychological fragility or resilience.
This keeps the test manageable and administrable: the focus remains on workplace conditions, not individualized psychometrics.

4. Legislative change as confirmation, not guidance

The majority highlights that the Legislature has now intervened to alter this framework by enacting WCL § 10(3)(c):

the Board “may not disallow 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.”

In effect:

The Legislature has dismantled the “greater than normal stress” barrier for these specified diagnoses going forward.
However, because the claims here were decided before the amendment and claimants did not argue retroactivity, the Court does not apply that more generous standard.
The majority also suggests that the new statute may even bar the Board from using the dissent’s more nuanced standard (comparing pandemic stress to a pre‑pandemic baseline) if a remittal were ordered – another reason, in the majority’s view, to avoid the dissent’s approach.

Doctrinally, this underscores a recurring theme: where the Court perceives a tension between the remedial purposes of the WCL and settled doctrinal lines, it signals that the Legislature, not the Court, is the proper body to recalibrate standards – and, here, the Legislature has done so.

B. The Dissent’s Alternative Framework

1. Reframing “similarly situated” in temporal terms

Judge Halligan accepts that Santacroce and its progeny require that compensable stress be “exceptional” compared to normal work stress. But she argues that, in an extraordinary environment like the early COVID‑19 pandemic, the Board may appropriately frame the comparison as follows:

Instead of comparing claimants to peers simultaneously enduring the same extraordinary conditions,
the Board may compare stress for public‑facing workers during the early pandemic to stress in a “normal work environment” pre‑pandemic.

That is, “similarly situated workers” can mean the same class of workers (transit workers, teachers) but operated across different time periods (before vs. during the early pandemic).

2. Analogizing to Schechter

Schechter is the doctrinal bridge supporting this temporal interpretation. There, the Court:

treated a several‑week period of unusually high workload as an “unusual strain,”
compared that period to the claimant’s own prior work history, and
deemed the resulting heart attack an “accident” even though the type of tasks remained the same.

By analogy, the dissent reasons that:

The early pandemic created dramatically heightened health‑related risk, even if the basic job duties (driving buses, teaching students) remained the same.
This temporal spike in risk can qualify as “extraordinary” stress compared to the pre‑pandemic baseline, satisfying the “more than normally encountered” standard.

3. Emphasis on empirical risk and the remedial purpose of the WCL

The dissent underscores empirical data that:

essential workers were diagnosed with COVID‑19 at higher rates than the general population;
transit workers were specifically at increased risk of infection and COVID‑related complications; and
a large majority of NYC bus and subway workers personally knew someone who died of COVID‑19 by August 2020.

These data reinforce that the stress suffered by essential workers was grounded in a real, elevated and ongoing health risk, not mere “irritations” of ordinary workplace conflict.

Judge Halligan weaves this into the broader history of the WCL – from the 1910 statute, through its invalidation in Ives, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the constitutional amendment, and Jensen – to argue that:

The WCL is a “compulsory scheme of insurance” designed to spread the cost of industrial and workplace risks.
The early pandemic was precisely the kind of extraordinary workplace hazard the WCL is meant to address.
A restrictive application of the “normal work environment” test that treats pandemic‑level risk as “normal” simply because it affected all similar workers simultaneously is in tension with that remedial purpose.

4. Proposed disposition: remittal under existing law

Rather than invoking the new WCL § 10(3)(c), Judge Halligan would:

hold that the Board misapplied the pre‑amendment “normal work environment” standard by failing to consider a temporal comparison, and
remit for the Board to determine:
1. whether the claimants were subjected to “extraordinary stress” as compared with a normal, pre‑pandemic work environment, and
2. whether their psychological injuries were causally related to that extraordinary stress.

Notably, the Board expressed that it had “felt constrained” by precedent to deny benefits but now “recognizes a reasonable argument” for treating early pandemic stress as extraordinary; the Board “does not object” to remittal under the dissent’s framework and even downplays any risk of “opening the floodgates.”

C. Majority vs. Dissent: Competing Visions

The split in McLaurin is not about the remedial purpose of the WCL – both opinions recite it – but about:

who should recalibrate doctrine in light of unprecedented circumstances (Court vs. Legislature), and
how flexible the “normal work environment” concept should be when an abnormal event (the pandemic) becomes, for a time, the shared baseline condition for all similarly situated workers.

The majority:

prioritizes doctrinal continuity and deference to the Board’s fact‑finding;
insists on the established comparative test (simultaneous, similarly situated co‑workers) until the Legislature says otherwise (which it now has, prospectively);
treats the pandemic as part of the “normal work environment” at the relevant time for those jobs.

The dissent:

sees room within existing precedent to treat the early pandemic as “extraordinary” by a pre‑/post‑ comparison;
leans on the WCL’s remedial mission and the truly exceptional public health crisis to justify that interpretative flexibility;
views the Board’s prior “constraint” as too narrow, hence the need for clarification in favor of claimants.

V. Impact and Future Implications

A. For Pre‑Amendment Psychological COVID‑19 Claims

For claims arising before the effective date of WCL § 10(3)(c), McLaurin will likely control:

The Board is not required to consider individual psychological vulnerabilities in deciding whether stress amounted to an “accident.”
Claimants alleging psychological injury from COVID‑19 exposure must still prove:
- an “accidental” injury – by showing stress greater than that experienced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment at the relevant time, and
- that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment – which may be aided by the “prevalence rule” only for the causation element, not for the accident element.
Evidence that the pandemic was widely stressful or dangerous, without more, will not suffice if other similarly situated workers experienced comparable stress in their shared work environment.

Practically, for many early‑pandemic psychological claims that were not already resolved, McLaurin makes it quite difficult to show that one worker’s stress was materially greater than that of peers who faced the same risk conditions.

B. For Post‑Amendment Claims Under WCL § 10(3)(c)

For PTSD, acute stress disorder, and major depressive disorder, the new WCL § 10(3)(c) substantially changes the landscape:

The Board may no longer disallow a claim solely on the ground that the stress was “not greater than that which usually occurs in the normal work environment.”
This effectively abolishes the elevated stress / comparative standard as an automatic bar for these diagnoses.
However, other elements remain:
- There must still be an “accident” or compensable work‑related event or condition, though what counts as “accidental” may now be more flexibly interpreted for these conditions.
- The injury must still “arise out of and in the course of employment.”

While McLaurin itself applies the old law, it clarifies the baseline from which the Legislature departed. Courts and the Board will now have to:

construe the scope of § 10(3)(c) (e.g., whether it applies to all forms of psychological stress, how it interacts with the concept of an “accident”), and
decide whether this amendment applies retroactively to claims pending as of its effective date (an issue explicitly left open here because claimants did not raise it).

C. Limits on the COVID “Prevalence Rule”

McLaurin also draws a clear doctrinal boundary for the COVID “prevalence rule”:

It is a tool for proving work‑relatedness of contracting COVID‑19 (a physical disease).
It does not – and cannot – substitute for the separate requirement that a psychological injury be “accidental” under the stress‑comparison framework (at least for pre‑amendment claims).

This will limit attempts to argue that psychological claims arising from fear of any communicable disease should be automatically treated like physical infection claims just because the disease was prevalent in the workplace.

D. Administrative Practice and Litigation Strategy

The Court’s criticism of the Board’s “peculiar” reluctance to defend its own decisions is also significant:

It signals that the Court expects the Board to maintain consistent positions and defend its interpretations when its decisions are challenged, even when the Legislature is adjusting standards.
Going forward, the Board may be more cautious about advancing “non‑positions” on appeal, particularly when its decisions are still governed by pre‑amendment law.

For practitioners:

On the claimant side, for pre‑amendment psychological claims, the focus must now be on differentiating the claimant’s specific stress from that of co‑workers – e.g., unique assignments, specific traumatic events, or unusual responsibilities.
On the employer/insurer side, McLaurin provides support for arguing that generalized, shared environmental stress (such as that of the pandemic) is insufficient, by itself, to constitute an “accident” under the old law.

VI. Clarifying Key Legal Concepts

A. “Accident” in Workers’ Compensation Law

In New York workers’ compensation, an “accident” does not necessarily mean a sudden physical mishap (like a fall). For stress‑related or psychological claims, an “accident” can be:

a discrete traumatic event (e.g., a robbery, assault), or
a period of unusual strain or extraordinary stress compared to the job’s normal environment.

However, ordinary job pressures, even serious ones, that are routinely faced by most workers in that occupation are typically not deemed “accidents” under the pre‑amendment standard.

B. “Arising out of and in the course of employment”

This phrase covers the work‑relatedness of the injury:

“In the course of” refers to the time and place – whether the injury occurred while the worker was performing job duties or engaging in an activity incidental to employment.
“Arising out of” refers to the causal nexus – whether the employment created or contributed to the risk that resulted in the injury.

The “prevalence rule” is a way of easing the burden of proving “arising out of” for communicable diseases like COVID‑19 when precise transmission routes are hard to establish.

C. “Substantial Evidence” Review

When reviewing Board decisions, courts do not re‑weigh the evidence. They ask only whether the Board’s factual findings are supported by “substantial evidence” – meaning:

such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.

Under this deferential standard, the Court in McLaurin accepts the Board’s finding that the claimants’ workplace stress was comparable to that of co‑workers, and thus non‑accidental.

D. “Similarly Situated Workers” and the “Normal Work Environment”

Under the pre‑amendment rule, these phrases are used to ensure that workers’ compensation covers exceptional workplace stress, not the inevitable pressures of work:

“Similarly situated workers” are those in comparable roles, under similar duties and conditions (e.g., fellow bus drivers, train operators, teachers).
“Normal work environment” means the ordinary, expected conditions of that job at the relevant time.

The majority treats the early pandemic as part of the “normal” environment for transit workers and teachers at that time, because all similarly situated workers faced those conditions. The dissent would treat that period as “extraordinary” by comparing it to pre‑pandemic conditions.

E. Retroactivity of Statutory Amendments

Whether a new statute (like WCL § 10(3)(c)) applies to past events or only to future ones is a question of retroactivity. The Court notes:

Claimants did not argue that the amendment should apply retroactively to their pre‑amendment claims.
Accordingly, the Court decides the case solely under the old law.
The majority flags, but does not resolve, whether the Board could apply the dissent’s proposed standard in light of the new statute – implicitly inviting future litigation over the amendment’s temporal scope and effect.

VII. Conclusion

Matter of McLaurin v. New York City Transit Authority occupies a transitional and clarifying role in New York’s workers’ compensation jurisprudence on psychological injuries.

On the one hand, it reaffirms and sharpens existing law as it stood pre‑amendment:

The Board is not required to engage in individualized assessments of psychological vulnerability in determining whether workplace stress constitutes an “accident.”
For emotional stress‑induced psychological injuries, a claimant must show stress greater than that faced by similarly situated workers in the normal work environment at the time.
Evidence of general environmental stress – even as grave as the early COVID‑19 pandemic – is not enough, if that stress was broadly shared among similarly situated co‑workers.
The COVID‑19 “prevalence rule” for physical infection claims does not create or lower the threshold for an “accident” in psychological claims; it speaks only to work‑relatedness.

On the other hand, the decision sits against the backdrop of, and explicitly gestures toward, legislative change:

The new WCL § 10(3)(c) significantly relaxes the “greater than normal stress” requirement for PTSD, acute stress disorder, and major depressive disorder going forward.
In emphasizing that the Legislature has chosen a “more favorable” standard than even the dissent’s proposal, the majority effectively marks the end of the old comparative‑stress regime for those conditions.

The sharp disagreement between the majority and the dissent highlights a deeper tension:

Should courts adapt existing doctrinal tests to unprecedented crises like the COVID‑19 pandemic, or leave those modifications to the Legislature?
Should “normal work environment” be understood relative to the conditions contemporaneously facing all similarly situated workers, or relative to a longer‑term baseline of what the job “normally” was before the crisis?

In McLaurin, the Court of Appeals opts for doctrinal continuity and legislative deference, even as the dissent presses for a more expansive, remedial reading of the same precedents in light of the extraordinary sacrifices of essential workers.

As a practical matter, the case will shape the treatment of legacy psychological claims from the early pandemic era, but its broader legacy may lie in how it clarifies both the limits of judicial adaptation and the central role of legislative intervention in modernizing workers’ compensation standards for psychological injuries.