Pollock Cohen Secures $2.4 Billion In Injunctive Relief Plus a Victory for NYC Retirees

After four years and seven court victories – including $2.4 billion in injunctive relief – our NYC retiree clients won a victory in a rather unexpected way:

Mayor Adams reversed his position and agreed not to force senior citizens and disabled first-responders into a Medicare Advantage program.

The Mayor’s change-of-heart occurred less than 48 hours after the City won a ruling in the Court of Appeals that said retirees could not rely on a promissory estoppel argument, and remanded the remaining arguments back to the trial court.

We are especially grateful to our co-counsel, Jake Gardener at Walden Macht Haran & Williams; appreciative of the Mayor, and thrilled for our clients.

In the summer of 2021, New York City tried to change the health benefits of 250,000 municipal retirees.

For more than 50 years these senior citizens and disabled first-responders had relied on the traditional Medicare-plus-Supplemental insurance that gave them access to their doctors and ensured their continuity of care. City Hall, however, wanted to strip them of these protections for a very simple reason: money.

If the City could force people into a (much inferior) Medicare Advantage plan, the City’s financial obligations would shift to the federal government. An ad hoc group of retirees came to Pollock Cohen to represent them. We did – and they won injunctive relief worth more than $2.1 billion.