He Had Heart Disease. He Also Had a Work Crash. New York Upheld Death Benefits.

Walter Greek drove a school bus for the Dansville Central School District, which is self-insured for workers' comp. He had been treated for an irregular heartbeat and cardiomyopathy, and he had been cleared to operate a commercial vehicle safely. On April 5, 2022, he was driving an empty bus into the district's bus garage parking lot when he lost control and struck a parked bus. He was found in cardiac arrest. Doctors later diagnosed a brain injury from prolonged loss of circulation, along with kidney, lung, and rib injuries. He stayed in a coma and died five days later.

The district argued that an unrelated cardiac event made him lose consciousness first, and that the rib and lung injuries came from resuscitation efforts, not from work. If that sequence was right, the death was a personal medical event that happened to occur at work, not a work injury.

The medical proof did not line up that cleanly. His treating cardiologists testified that chest trauma could have triggered the abnormal heart rhythm. One said it was impossible to say with certainty whether the arrhythmia came before the crash or resulted from it. The district's own medical reviewer acknowledged that he had assumed a cardiac event occurred first. An assumption is not the same as proof, and the Workers' Compensation Board did not have to accept it.

Contribution is enough for death benefits

On October 15, the Appellate Division, Third Department, affirmed the Board in Matter of Greek v. Dansville Central School District, 2026 NY Slip Op. 06044. The court upheld the finding that the injuries arose from the work accident or from necessary treatment for it. On death benefits, it pointed to the medical examiner's testimony that the crash injuries placed added stress on Mr. Greek's heart and contributed to his death.

That word, contributed, decides a lot of cases. The work injury did not have to be the sole cause, or even the main cause. His heart disease and the crash trauma could both be part of the story. Once the Board had medical evidence that the work injuries contributed, that was enough to support death benefits.

Death did not end the claim, either

The district also tried to end the underlying injury claim because Mr. Greek died before it was resolved and could not testify or sit for an independent medical exam. The court would not do it. Surveillance footage, hospital records, and an independent medical review gave the district a fair way to contest the claim without him. The lesson cuts both ways. A claim does not disappear when a worker dies, so the record you build in the first days is often the whole case later.

There was one more procedural point worth noting. The district objected to a missed prehearing conference, but it raised that objection more than a year and a half later, after extensive proceedings had already gone forward. The court treated that delay as a waiver. Objections raised late can be objections lost.

Lesson one: a preexisting condition is not a defense by itself

Plenty of workers have heart disease, bad backs, and old injuries. That fact alone does not defeat a claim. If your defense is that a personal condition caused the accident, you need medical proof of the sequence, not a reviewer who assumes it. Get the timeline pinned down early, while the records and witnesses are still fresh.

Lesson two: build the record as if the worker will never be able to tell the story

In the hardest claims, the worker may not be available to explain what happened. Video, incident reports, witness statements, and complete medical records are what let either side prove its version. Employers who preserve video and document the scene on day one are in a far stronger position than employers who try to rebuild the facts a year later.

What to do now

• Preserve video right away. Garage, yard, and vehicle footage gets overwritten fast. Save it on every serious injury, every time.
• Pin down the sequence. When a medical event and an accident happen together, the order matters. Record what witnesses saw first, and make sure the medical review addresses the actual timeline instead of assuming one.
• Do not wait on procedural objections. If something was missed at a conference or a hearing, raise it then, not after the case has moved on without you.
• Treat fatal and near-fatal claims as record cases from day one. Statements, records, and expert review need to be lined up early, because you may never get a second chance to build them.

The common thread is early work on the file

Nothing in this ruling turned on a clever argument made years later. It turned on what was in the record: video of the crash, hospital records, treating doctors who could speak to causation, and a medical examiner who could explain how trauma added stress to a weak heart. The side with the better early record had the stronger case.

The CompShield Audit looks at the entire life of your claims across four pillars: safety before the accident, investigation when it happens, carrier oversight and reserves after filing, and loss run and mod review. The investigation pillar exists for exactly this reason: the facts you capture when an injury happens are the facts you will be living with for the life of the claim. The deliverable is a Findings Report that shows where your program is leaking and what to do about it.

CompShield is a workers' compensation claims defense and cost control firm. This article summarizes a published court decision in general terms and is not legal advice.