NY Court Reaffirms Limits on Board’s Authority to Reject Uncontroverted Medical Testimony

New York’s Appellate Division, Third Department, has again emphasized an important constraint on the Workers’ Compensation Board’s fact-finding prerogative: while the Board may weigh competing medical opinions, it may not disregard uncontroverted medical testimony on causation and then supply its own medical theory in its place. That principle proved dispositive in McGann v. Suffolk County Water Auth., 2025 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6534 (3d Dept. Nov. 20, 2025), where both physicians—claimant’s treating doctor and the employer’s orthopedic consultant—ultimately agreed that claimant’s bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome arose from decades of repetitive hand-intensive work as a senior meter reader.