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The New York State Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit filed in 2016 by eight retired police officers and their union, which alleged that the city owed them compensation for unused sick time. In total, the officers were requesting more than $450,000 in the lawsuit.
Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas announced that Judge Joan Lefkowitz accepted the City’s request that she end the case in favor of Mount Vernon.
In her decision, Lefkowitz said that “the record demonstrates that the (union contract) does not explicitly provide that a retiring officer shall be paid for all unused sick leave. No retiring officers, other than plaintiffs here, have ever interpreted the ‘all accrued time’ clause in the (union contract) to include all unused sick leave.”
“A select handful of retirees engaged in bullying behavior and sought to intimidate me into giving them this big payout that was never done in the history of the department,” Thomas stated. “This group sought to spread lies, defame and impugn my character and disparage the city in an attempt to get paid off. Despite the attacks, I stood up, taking hits for the taxpayer and we won.”
Thomas said that if the City had lost the case, “the repercussions would have been more expensive,” citing a legal brief filed by the City’s attorneys.
“The liability would not end there. The unit at issue has over 200 members,” stated the City’s legal filing with the court. “The liability to all future retirees for every day of unused leave would be financially devastating and something that the PBA and the City never bargained for or intended.”
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