A $162 million wage-and-hour settlement covering roughly 200,000 personal assistants who worked in New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program is headed for its last court test on November 10, 2026. The money would go to aides paid through Public Partnerships LLC, the statewide fiscal intermediary that processes pay for CDPAP, in a case that turns on how much those workers were owed for their hours. Unlike most class settlements, the notice says nobody has to file anything.
The case is Calderon v. Public Partnerships, LLC, and the class is defined as current and former personal assistants paid through Public Partnerships as the statewide fiscal intermediary for CDPAP services in New York City, Nassau County, Suffolk County and Westchester County between March 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lara K. Eshkenazi of the Eastern District of New York, the federal court based in Brooklyn, granted preliminary approval on July 1, 2026 and set the fairness hearing, where she decides whether to approve the deal as final, for November 10.
What the November 10 fairness hearing decides
Preliminary approval only lets notice go out. Final approval is the step that makes the settlement binding and releases the fund. Class counsel’s own summary is blunt about the sequence: the settlement, as the Katz Banks Kumin firm puts it, will not be final until after the notice period and final approval by the Court, a process it says will take a number of months.
That makes November 10 a milestone, not a payday. If Judge Eshkenazi approves, the fund still has to be divided among about 200,000 people, and the notice published by the Legal Aid Society does not set out a per-person figure or a payment date. Anyone quoting a check amount before the allocation is published is guessing.
Anyone quoting a check amount is guessing, and because this payout is automatic nobody files anything, so the job left is tracking it, not filing. The Settlement & Refund Recovery System is a paid tracking product, not an official channel, and it does not file anything or decide who is in the class. It includes a claim log and payment tracker for recording each date and amount as it appears, and the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice for sorting out what the hearing, approval and payment dates each mean.
Track the $162 million Public Partnerships payout from hearing to deposit →
The class is large and uneven. Aides who worked the full period, 14 months of CDPAP work, and those who worked a few weeks sit in the same class, so the notice’s lack of a single payout number is expected rather than an omission worth reading anything into.
Why an automatic payout changes the job
The notice states the rule in one sentence: “Class Members do not have to take any action to benefit from the Settlement.” There is no claim form and no deadline to file one. That removes the usual risk of missing a window, and it moves the risk elsewhere: a payment mailed or sent to a stale address or an old payroll record can go astray with nobody having asked for it.
For a covered aide, the open questions are therefore practical ones. Is the mailing address and payment information on file with Public Partnerships current? Did a notice arrive at all, and from whom? A message demanding a fee, a Social Security number or a bank login to “release” a payout is not part of a settlement that the notice describes as requiring no action.
The people who negotiated the deal are named in the notice. The named plaintiffs are Philip Calderon, Farshad Pinchasi, Allison Fields and Dana Folgar, and class counsel comes from the Legal Aid Society, including Richard Blum and Rebekah Cook-Mack, and from Katz Banks Kumin LLP, including Hugh Baran. Questions about the notice go to the settlement administrator, Atticus Administration, at PublicPartnershipsSettlement@atticusadmin.com or 800-314-2601.
What the $162 million and the 200,000 headcount do and do not say
The fund is $162 million for a class of about 200,000, which averages to roughly $810 a person before any deductions. That arithmetic is a ceiling on what an average could look like, not a forecast: the notice does not say what share goes to attorneys’ fees, administration or service awards to the four named plaintiffs, and the allocation formula decides who gets more. The notice does not state the fee request, so no net figure can responsibly be given.
What the settlement does record is the scope. It covers wage-and-hour claims by personal assistants paid through Public Partnerships in four New York counties, which is the geographic limit of the class. Aides who worked elsewhere in the state fall outside the definition on the notice, even though Public Partnerships served as the fiscal intermediary statewide.
Following the Public Partnerships payout after November 10
The free route starts with the class notice posted by the Legal Aid Society, which carries the class definition, the hearing date and the administrator’s contact details. Atticus Administration is the body to ask about notice delivery and address updates; the settlement website named in the class counsel materials is PublicPartnershipsSettlement.com.
Three things are worth keeping in one place: the address on file with Public Partnerships and any change made since April 2026, the date the notice was received, and the outcome of the November 10 hearing once the court rules. The ruling matters most, because payment timing in a class settlement generally follows final approval and, if anyone appeals, may wait on it.
The trap is a request for money or personal data from anyone claiming to speed up an automatic payout. The notice describes no fee, no form and no login. The administrator’s published phone number and email, taken from the notice itself rather than from a message that arrived unprompted, are the check.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System pairs the claim log and payment tracker, with room to log each notice and payment, with the scam-proof rules for checking whether a message about a settlement payout is real. It is a paid product that sits beside the free notice and administrator, not in place of them.
Get The Settlement & Refund Recovery System to log the Public Partnerships payout →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
