Mitchell v. Barrios-Paoli

253 A.D.2d 281, 687 N.Y.S.2d 319, 1999 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2998
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedMarch 23, 1999
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 253 A.D.2d 281 (Mitchell v. Barrios-Paoli) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mitchell v. Barrios-Paoli, 253 A.D.2d 281, 687 N.Y.S.2d 319, 1999 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2998 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

[283]*283OPINION OF THE COURT

Rosenberger, J. P.

The instant class action was brought by public assistance recipients who have been classified as “employable with limitations” (E-II) due to medical problems and who have been assigned to the City’s mandatory Work Experience Program (WEP) as a condition of receiving benefits. Plaintiffs allege that the City habitually assigns E-II WEP participants to job assignments incompatible with their disabilities, leading to the loss of benefits without due process. They additionally allege that the State fails to supervise the City’s administration of WEP pursuant to the Social Services Law.

We find that plaintiffs raise serious fairness questions about WEP’s implementation and may well have shown their entitlement to CPLR article 78 relief. However, we also find that the IAS Court’s grant of class certification should be reversed as unnecessary in this context, portions of the injunction vacated as overbroad, and defendants’ cross motion to convert plaintiffs’ remaining grievances into individual article 78 proceedings granted.

In exchange for welfare benefits, the City requires aid recipients to perform WEP assignments with City, State or nonprofit agencies unless the recipients are exempted due to physical or mental disabilities (see, Social Services Law § 131 [5]; § 164). A recipient may not be assigned to a WEP job that exceeds her medical limitations (Social Services Law § 332-b [7]; § 335-b [5] [e]).

A recipient claiming disabilities is sent to the City’s medical contractor, Health Services Systems (HSS), whose doctors examine her and classify her as E-I (employable), E-II (employable with limitations), E-III (temporarily disabled) or E-IV (permanently disabled). The City’s position is that E-II persons should be expected to work but will be assigned to jobs compatible with their conditions, while E-III persons will be exempted for the duration of their disability and E-IV persons will be exempted.

Thus, there are two potential types of mismatch between a disabled participant and a WEP assignment. First, a participant may be mistakenly classed as E-II when she is actually E-III or E-IV, and be sent to work even though she is unable to do any work. Second, a participant may be properly classified as E-II, but be assigned to a particular WEP job that is incompatible with the physical limitations recognized by the [284]*284City’s own examining doctors. Plaintiffs contend that the latter fate has befallen them and the class members they would represent.

Once a recipient’s general employability classification is determined, she receives three notices from the City relating to her employability and work requirements, plus an Orientation Manual. The first form, the Employability Notice, states that the recipient has been found “employable” by City doctors. It emphasizes that the recipient must accept WEP assignments “when appropriate” or lose benefits. It describes how a recipient may request a conciliation hearing and a State administrative hearing “[i]f you believe that you should not be considered employable”.

The Employability Notices received by plaintiffs do not specify that plaintiffs were found employable with limitations. Furthermore, the standard form omits two important facts. It does not mention the City’s obligation to accommodate the recipient’s medical needs. Nor does it disclose the recipient’s right — conceded by the City in this action — to receive benefits without performing an allegedly unsuitable assignment while her challenge to it is pending (see, 18 NYCRR 358-3.6). In fact, the Employability Notice explicitly says that unless she requests a hearing on “employability” within 10 days of receiving the form, she must continue to perform the assignment.

The 10-day time limit makes some sense if the issue is overall inability to work, since presumably the participant has all the facts at the time she receives the notice: she is being asked to work but knows she is completely disabled. Yet where the issue is inability to perform a certain type of work, the relevant facts are not known to her until she arrives at the job site, because the City here insists that the participant may not claim a job is inappropriate until she receives the actual details of her assignment. Since by this time the 10-day period has usually expired, and this is the only grace period mentioned on the form, the form gives rise to the inference that benefits will not be continued pending a challenge to a particular job.

Named plaintiff Marie Mitchell’s case highlights how the form’s general reference to “employability” and its failure to mention any way to challenge specific assignments forces participants into a Catch-22. Along with her Employability Notice she received an Assignment Information Summary saying she had been detailed to do maintenance work, a job category she considered incompatible with her respiratory ailments. Apparently believing that “employability” referred both to her [285]*285general ability to work and her ability to do this type of work, she immediately requested a fair hearing before going to the job site, so that she would not miss the 10-day deadline and lose her benefits. However, at the hearing, the City said that her claims were not ripe for review because she had never given the agency the chance to assign her a specific assignment. Meanwhile, the State said that the only issue she could raise at this point was whether she was employable at all, a point she failed to establish because she had never meant to raise it in the first place.

The second notice sent to WEP participants is a summary of the HSS doctors’ findings and employability classification, known as the Physician Assessment of Client Employability (PACE) report. The PACE documents the recipient’s specific medical limitations that need to be accommodated in matching her with a WEP job. Such documentation may then be brought to the work site to enable a participant to decline an inappropriate assignment. Plaintiffs allege that they never received any summaries of the HSS medical findings and that they only received the Employability Notice and the Assignment Information Summary. Pursuant to an amendment to the Social Services Law effective November 1, 1997 (Social Services Law § 332-b), the City now sends WEP participants copies of their PACE forms, which apparently was not the practice beforehand. In any event, as the PACE is only a medical form, it says nothing about the participants’ procedural rights.

The third notice is the Assignment Information Summary, which names the government agency where participants will be sent (e.g., the Parks Department) and the job category (e.g., maintenance work), but not the particular assignment they will receive. This notice does not always inform participants of their E-II status either. Named plaintiff Pearly Alli’s notice said nothing about it, while class member Cytherea Iverson’s notice contained a terse “Comment: Coded E-II by HSS 3/28/ 96. Asthma employable/limitations.” Like the other documents furnished to WEP participants, this one only mentions the right to a hearing “[i]f you believe your employability status has changed”, and states that meanwhile the participant must keep going to her work assignment until further notice.

Plaintiffs allege that because the Assignment Information Summary does not name the specific job a participant will be asked to do, they are deprived of the opportunity to raise a timely challenge to improper assignments.

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Bluebook (online)
253 A.D.2d 281, 687 N.Y.S.2d 319, 1999 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2998, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mitchell-v-barrios-paoli-nyappdiv-1999.