AMCOMP Council Issues 9/11 Workers’ Comp Mental Stress Claims Report

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the American Society of Workers Comp Professionals Inc. (AMCOMP) assembled the Workers’ Compensation Mental Stress Council to study the impact of stress claims on the insurance industry.

According to Donald DeCarlo, AMCOMP chairman and president, “The Council has recently published a comprehensive Workers’ Compensation Mental Stress Claims Report to help workers’ compensation professionals better understand how to more effectively and equitably address workers’ compensation mental stress claims from such a catastrophe.” He added, “This report presents an overview of the latest and possibly most horrific series of events in which work- related mental stress is said to have caused an employee to suffer a mental disability.”

The AMCOMP report contains information on mental-mental stress claims under New York law, mental-mental stress claims under the law in other states; terrorist acts and the exclusive remedy doctrine in workers’ comp; interplay between the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund and the New York workers compensation law; New York workers’ comp stress claims—score card and coping with the stress of disasters and terrorism. It was compiled using the experience of the AMCOMP Mental Stress Council and various AMCOMP Board members.

According to DeCarlo, “The AMCOMP Workers’ Compensation Mental Stress Claims Report is intended to provide those involved with the workers’ compensation system in New York both background information and an overview of the law in New York. It also is intended to provide, countrywide, insight into the future of mental stress claims arising from events such as 9/11.”