The New York Insurance Department’s Office of General Counsel issued the following advisory legal opinions in May and June:
- When an injured insured is unable to return to work due to injuries arising from an automobile accident; the insured’s employer hires another person to fill the insured’s vacant position during the insured’s period of disability; and the insured cannot immediately resume her employment when she is medically cleared to return to work, the insured may recover lost wages for the period after she is medically cleared but before she actually resumes work.
- An entity need not obtain an independent adjuster’s license in New York if it only issues checks to providers on behalf of an insurer when the insurer funds the checking account and makes all decisions on the underlying claims.
- The changes to New York law with regard to late notice of claims apply to policies issued in New York but delivered outside the state and to claims-made policies. The law applies only to liability insurance policies, but insurers may include the prejudice rules in other types of policies.
- An employee of an insurer that is adjusting a claimant’s first-party no-fault claim may not share non-public personal health information about that claimant with an employee of an affiliate insurer that is adjusting the claimant’s third-party BI claim.
- New York Insurance Law and regulations do not permit an insurer to require a corporate assignee of no-fault benefits to designate an individual of the insurer’s choice to submit to an examination under oath.
The OGC issued two other opinions pertaining to the legality of a proposed annuity contract and the applicability of a specific regulation to health care providers and accident and health insurers. All opinions issued since 2000 are available for download from the department’s Web site.


