New York Court of Appeals Holds That Justice for Injured Workers Act Applies Retroactively to Pre-2022 Cases

I thought this was an interesting decision posted today by the Court of Appeals.

Waldy Quinones Garcia v. Monadnock Construction, Inc. (Decided May 21, 2026)

The court held that the Justice For Injured Workers Act (JIWA) enacted “effective immediately” as of 2022 prohibited the court from giving collateral estoppel effect to workers’ compensation decisions applies to all cases, including those filed prior to 2022.  This Garcia decision was a labor law construction accident civil case filed in 2020, where a contemporaneous workers’ comp litigation was pending and there the Board found that there was no causally related injury.

The defendants in the civil case sought summary judgment based on the collateral estoppel of the workers’ compensation decision, but the Appellate Division, as affirmed by the Court of Appeals, held that even though, usually, a law cannot be applied retroactively, here there was no right that a party possessed at the time it acted that would be disturbed, no increase in a party’s liability for past conduct, and no imposition of new duties with respect to transactions already completed. In other words, because the statute did not give or take away any right that the party had at the time of the enactment, it can be used retroactively. (Note that the statute still allows collateral estoppel for determination of employee/employer relationships.)