Appeals Court Denies Bus Driver’s PTSD Claim, Says Attack ‘Not Outside Norm’

New York City, NY (WorkersCompensation.com) – A New York appeals court denied a bus drivers’ workers’ compensation claim on Jan. 16, saying the PTSD she developed from an attack was “not outside” of a normal work day for New York City bus drivers.

According to court records, the appeals court dismissed New York bus driver Jenise Waddy’s workers’ compensation claim that she suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of an attack by a man as she was driving.

Waddy was a transit bus operator for 21 years, court records indicate, and was driving in Brooklyn when a man pounded on the door of her bus and demanded to be let onto the bus. Waddy refused to open the door and the man climbed onto the front bumper of the bus, bange on the glass, bent a windshield wiper blade, broke one of the bus’s side mirrors and tried to reach into the bus through a side window. Waddy testified that the man verbally threatened her, but that she was able to close the window before he could reach inside.

Following the incident, Waddy returned to work after three months, and filed a workers' compensation claim saying that she suffered from PTSD as a result of the incident. The self-insured employer, Manhattan & Bronx Surface Transit Authority, denied the claim. Later, an independent medical exam and the deposition of Waddy’s physician, a Workers’ Compensation Law Judge found that Waddy had sustained a work-related injury and awarded her benefits.

When the trans authority appealed, a representative of the employer testified that encountering irate bus passengers was not uncommon and that while most people simply “curse at the driver” and walk away, some do become so angry that they punch or kick the bus.

The appeals court said that in order for a workplace injury to be compensable, a claimant must establish that an injury was caused by a workplace accident, and that when the injury is purely psychological, “a claimant must demonstrate that the stress that caused the claimed [psychological] injury was greater than that which other similarly situated workers experienced in the normal work environment"

As such, the appeal board found that “the job responsibilities of a bus operator necessarily involve interacting with the general public ... , including unruly ones,” and that “it is expected that bus operators would be exposed to unruly individuals and property damage to the vehicle.”

“We do not second-guess the Board’s factual determination that this type of incident is one that, as a bus operator, ‘claimant should reasonably and ordinarily be expected to encounter in [her] normal work environment,’ as it is supported by substantial evidence in the record,” the court wrote.

However, one of the five judges dissented.

In the dissenting opinion, the judge wrote, “the incident as described by the majority should not in any civilized society be deemed part of ‘the normal work environment’ of a transit bus operator. There is nothing ‘normal’ about being victimized by such dangerous conduct. Since it is undisputed that claimant suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder as a result, the Board erred in disallowing her claim.”

On Jan. 14, in New York, a bus driver was found dead in an ambulette bus in the Bronx.

Officials said the front door window of the ambulette had been broken and the driver, Peter Forrest, was found lying in the back of the bus in a pool of blood. The New York Police Department said Forrest died of injuries from “trauma around the body, and that the incident is a suspected homicide. Surveillance video of the area at the time of the attack showed a man exiting the ambulette and getting into a waiting car on Monday morning.

According to Rolling Stone, Forrest was also known as P. Fluid, front man for the group 24-7 Spyz, an 80s and 90s Black-led rock group that blended metal, punk, and funk The band’s biggest hit was a hard rock/rap cover of Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.” P. Fluid was credited with influencing the rap-rock sound of the 90s. He announced he was quitting the music business on stage during the bands 1900s tour with Jane’s Addiction. He was 64.

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