Geoffrey H. Schotter Attorney

First Admitted: 2012, New York

Professional Webpage: https://www.lawforworkers.com/our-team/geoffrey-schotter/

Bar/Professional Activity:

United states District Court for the Northen District of New York , 2019
United Stated Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2019
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 2012
New York, 2012
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 2012

Verdicts/Settlements (Case Results):

Matter of Anderson v. City of Yonkers, No. 535958, 2024 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1763, 2024 NY Slip Op 01755 (App. Div., 3d Dept. Mar. 28, 2024). The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department held that claims by public facing workers for mental stress related to working in COVID-19 prevalent work environments during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are compensable even where the claimant did not actually contract COVID-19, overturning the Workers' Compensation Board's policy to the contrary. In reaching this determination, the Court fundamentally reshaped the law governing mental stress accidents in New York workers' compensation cases more generally, holding (1) that the claimant's burden of proof in a mental stress accident case is no higher than it is in a claim for a physical injury and (2) that when determining whether the claimant has met his or her burden of proof, the Board must consider the claimant's particular vulnerabilities which, if present, support a finding that a compensable accident has in fact occurred., 2024

Educational Background:

Cornell University, B.A., 2005

Scholarly Lectures/Writings:

Author, Diachronic Constitutionalism: A Remedy for the Court's Originalist Fixation, Case Western Reserve Law Review, 2010
Tutor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice through CUNY's SEEK program
Author, Shouting Fire in a Burning Theater: Distinguishing Fourth Estate from Fifth Column in the Age of Wikileaks, Case Western Reserve Journal of Law, Technology and the Internet, 2011
Co-Author, At America's Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly, American Civil Liberties Union, 2012
Author, A Peculiar Type of Democratic Unity: Carl J. Friedrich's Strange Schmittian Turn or How Friedrich Stopped Worrying and Learned to Decide on the Exception, 2011
Research Assistant, Prisons for Profit: A Look at Prison Privatization, American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, 2011

Other Outstanding Achievements:

Rodriguez v. City of New York, 172 A.D.3d 556, 101 N.Y.S.3d 303 (App. Div., 1st Dept. 2019). Petitioner's late notice of claim against City of New York Department of Correction for injuries from an assault by an inmate in a hospital prison ward was excused because an employee of the Departmenbt of Correction interviewed her on the date of the assault about her intention to sue and therefore had actual notice of her intent to sue within the statutory 90-day period and was not prejudiced by her delay in filing a notice of claim., 2019
Golovashchenko v. Asar Intl. Corp.,, 153 A.D.3d 1475, 60 N.Y.S.3d 722 (App. Div., 3d Dept., 2017). The Board erred by finding the claimant to have a permanent limitation to light duty work without that finding being supported by any medical opinion in the record, and by classifying the claimant with a 60 percent loss of wage earning capacity on the basis of that erroneous finding., 2017
Trusewicz v. Delta Environmental, 178 A.D.3d 1312, 116 N.Y.S.3d 422 (App. Div., 3d Dept. 2019). The Workers' Compensation Board erred in requiring the claimant to sign an open-ended HIPAA release, without limiting that release to treatment records pertaining to injuries he was actually claiming. , 2019
Chrostowski v. Pinnacle Environmental Corp., 169 A.D.3d 1217, 93 N.Y.S.3d 472 (App. Div., 3d Dept. 2019). Back and other musculoskeletal injuries sustained while participating in post-9/11 rescue, recovery, or cleanup are compensable under Article 8-A of of the Workers' Compensation Law and the loosened statute of limitations provisions of that Article therefore apply to claims for such injuries., 2019
Cox v. Saks Fifth Avenue, 130 A.D.3d 1236, 13 N.Y.S.3d 681 (App. Div., 3d Dept. 2015) As is the case with a number of other states, New York allows recovery for work-related stress if the claimant can show that the stress that caused the injury was greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment. A New York appellate court, reversing a decision by the sstate's Workers' Compensation Board, held a worker had established that he was under an unusual level of stress where he testified that during a promotional event for a manufacturer of high-priced luxury goods, he was directed by a supervisor to fabricate reserve orders in order to deceive the manufacturer and enhance the employer's inventory. One supervisor testified that claimant became upset during the promotional event and that the supervisor heard the employee tell another supervisor that he did not want to submit false orders. The WCLJ concluded that claimant sustained a mental injury as a result of 'the stress of being directed to engage in deceptive business practices' and that this stress was greater than that experienced in the normal work environment. The Board subsequently disallowed the claim, finding that, because all of the employees in claimant's department were pressured to place reserve orders and were given the same instruction, claimant's stress was not greater than that of similarly situated workers. The court held that the mere fact that other employees may have received the same instruction could not support a finding that the stress was not unusual; claimant testified that he would have been fired for such conduct in other upscale department stores where he previously had worked. The decision is available at: http://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/ad3/Decisions/2015/520289.pdf, 2015
Bowers v. New York City Transit Authority, 178 A.D.3d 1172, 115 N.Y.S.3d 159 (App. Div., 3d Dept.. 2019). Workers' compensation claimants cannot be directed to demonstrate a work search as a condition of continuing to receive benefits until either their own treating physicians or the Board determines that their disability is less than total., 2019

Industry Groups:

the working class

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