| Matter of Schmidt v Putnam County Off. of Sheriff |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 02602 [49 AD3d 761] |
| March 18, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, Second Department |
| In the Matter of Jeffrey Schmidt, Respondent, v PutnamCounty Office of the Sheriff et al., Appellants. |
—[*1] Shayne R. Gallo, Kingston, N.Y., for respondent.
In a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78 to review a determination of the Putnam CountySheriff dated March 24, 2006, which denied the petitioner disability benefits pursuant to GeneralMunicipal Law § 207-c, the appeal is from a judgment of the Supreme Court, PutnamCounty (O'Rourke, J.), dated November 21, 2006, which granted the petition and awarded thepetitioner disability benefits.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed, with costs.
In order to be eligible for disability benefits pursuant to General Municipal Law §207-c, a covered municipal employee need only prove a direct causal relationship between jobduties and the resulting illness or injury (see Matter of White v County of Cortland, 97NY2d 336, 340 [2002]). The word "duties" in General Municipal Law § 207-cencompasses the full range of a covered employee's job duties (see Matter of Theroux v Reilly, 1NY3d 232, 244 [2003]). Preexisting nonwork-related conditions do not bar recovery underGeneral Municipal Law § 207-c when the petitioner demonstrates that the job duties werea direct cause of the disability (see Matter of White v County of Cortland, 97 NY2d 336,340 [2002]).
Here, there is no dispute that the petitioner was capable of performing all of his job dutiesprior to his fall, which occurred in the performance of his duties on January 31, 2003. Althoughthe petitioner's medical records refer to preexisting injuries to the petitioner's knees, the recordsunequivocally established that the petitioner sustained acute bilateral medial meniscal tears with[*2]subsequent surgical repair and disability as a result of hison-the-job fall on January 31, 2003. The records also demonstrated that the petitioner'sline-of-duty injuries were a direct cause of his disability.
Accordingly, the Putnam County Sheriff's denial was not rationally based upon the evidencepresented and thus, the Supreme Court properly found the denial to be arbitrary and capricious(see CPLR 7803 [3]; Matter of White v County of Cortland, 97 NY2d 336[2002]).
The appellants' remaining contentions are without merit. Rivera, J.P., Skelos, Santucci andLeventhal, JJ., concur.