New York Appellate Division Reports

MATTER OF TAYLOR v. RALEIGH HOTEL, 500560 [3d Dept
12-21-2006] 2006 NY Slip Op 09680 In the Matter of the
Claim of GEORGE TAYLOR, Appellant, v. RALEIGH HOTEL et al.,
Respondents. WORKERS’ COMPENSATION BOARD, Respondent.
500560. Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New
York, Third Department. Decided and Entered: December 21,
2006.

Appeal from a decision of the Workers’ Compensation Board,
filed January 23, 2006, which denied claimant’s request to
reopen his case.

George Taylor, New York City, appellant pro se.

Stewart, Greenblatt, Manning & Baez, Syosset (Patrick M.
Conroy of counsel), for Raleigh Hotel and another,
respondents.

Before: PETERS, J.P., MUGGLIN, ROSE, LAHTINEN and KANE, JJ.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ROSE, J.

Although accounts differ as to when and how he arrived
there, claimant was discovered, on June 13, 2002, on a
first-floor roof at the Raleigh Hotel in the Town of
Fallsburg, Sullivan County, after having fallen from a roof
three floors higher. Claimant, a painter who had been
living and working at the hotel for approximately five
weeks prior to the incident, maintains that his fall
occurred on the morning of June 11, 2002, while he was
attempting to scrape paint off of a wall adjacent to the
fourth-floor roof, and that he lay there unconscious for two
days. At a hearing regarding his subsequent claim for
workers’ compensation benefits, however, multiple hotel
employees testified that they witnessed an intoxicated
claimant stumbling around the hotel grounds only hours
before he was found on June 13.

A Workers’ Compensation Law Judge (hereinafter WCLJ)
determined, in a decision filed October 24, 2003, that the
testimony of the other employees was more credible than
that of claimant and disallowed his claim. That
determination was affirmed by the Workers’ Compensation
Board on May 27, 2004. On June 8, 2004, claimant submitted a
notice of appeal to this Court regarding that
determination. His contemporaneous request to the Board for
reconsideration was denied on September 28, 2004 and his
appeal to this Court was deemed abandoned pursuant to 22
NYCRR 800.12 in March 2005. Claimant’s further requests that
the Board reopen or rehear his case were formally denied in
a decision filed on January 23, 2006, prompting the instant
appeal

Inasmuch as judicial review of a Board determination not to
reopen claimant’s case is limited to whether the Board
abused its discretion, we affirm (see Matter of Harris v
Phoenix Cent. School Dist., 28 AD3d 1051, 1052 [2006]).
Despite his insistence that he has submitted newly
discovered evidence, a review of the record reveals that
claimant’s sole contention is that the initial credibility
determinations of the WCLJ who disallowed his claim were
unsound. Such an assertion fails to satisfy the reopening
criteria set forth in 12 NYCRR 300.14. Furthermore,
claimant, who testified in his own behalf and was afforded
the opportunity, through counsel, to cross-examine the
employer’s witnesses, has offered no supporting
documentation for his allegations regarding the falsity of
any testimony relied on by either the WCLJ or the Board
(cf. Matter of Hughes v Steuben County Self-Ins. Plan, 248
AD2d 757, 758 [1998]).

Peters, J.P., Mugglin, Lahtinen and Kane, JJ., concur.

ORDERED that the decision is affirmed, without costs.