Teichmann v. New York City Employees' Retirement System

Background

Boris Teichmann represented himself in suing the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS). He alleged federal and state due-process violations, breach of contract, and intentional infliction of emotional distress concerning disability-pension benefits.

Teichmann worked for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development until December 9, 2001. He alleged that an on-the-job injury caused post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and other conditions that substantially interfered with daily activities. He became a vested NYCERS member in 1988.

Teichmann filed a disability-pension application on December 18, 2008. NYCERS initially treated the application as untimely because agency records showed that he had not been employed for more than seven years. In 2011, however, the agency rescinded his termination and placed him on unpaid leave for the purpose of allowing him to file a disability-retirement application. Teichmann filed a second application on November 23, 2011, and NYCERS approved that application in 2017 after earlier denials were vacated and sent back for further consideration in state-court proceedings.

NYCERS set Teichmann’s retirement date for benefit purposes as December 23, 2011, based on the 2011 application and the applicable retirement-date rule. Teichmann repeatedly asked NYCERS to pay benefits based on his 2008 application. In a June 11, 2018, letter, NYCERS acknowledged that extending his unpaid-leave status retroactively made the 2008 application valid, but stated that its medical board had not considered that application. NYCERS also stated that the retirement date would remain December 23, 2011. Teichmann challenged that decision in a state-court proceeding, but the challenge was dismissed as untimely, and the dismissal was affirmed.

Claims and Analysis

NYCERS moved to dismiss the amended complaint. At this stage, the court accepted well-pleaded factual allegations as true and interpreted the self-represented plaintiff’s filings generously, but required facts that made the claims plausible rather than merely possible.

Substantive due process. The court dismissed the federal substantive-due-process claim and the analogous New York constitutional claim. The court explained that substantive due process protects against government action that is arbitrary, conscience-shocking, or oppressive in a constitutional sense, not every incorrect or ill-advised decision. NYCERS’s decision to calculate Teichmann’s retirement date using the end of his unpaid leave or the 2011 application might have been wrong, but the allegations did not show conduct extreme enough to meet that constitutional standard.

Procedural due process. The court denied the motion to dismiss the claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating procedural due process. Section 1983 provides a federal claim against a person acting under state authority who deprives someone of a constitutional right. The court concluded that Teichmann plausibly alleged a protected property interest in pension benefits and alleged that NYCERS refused to consider or process a valid 2008 application, providing him no process before depriving him of benefits.

The court rejected NYCERS’s arguments that the procedural-due-process claim was untimely, barred by issue preclusion, or barred by the rule limiting federal district-court review of injuries caused by state-court judgments. The court held that the federal claim accrued on June 11, 2018, when NYCERS first acknowledged the validity of the 2008 application but refused to consider it. The court also held that the earlier state-court proceeding concerned a different decision and did not prevent this federal claim from proceeding. The state-court judgment did not cause the injury alleged in the federal complaint because NYCERS’s refusal to consider the application occurred before that proceeding.

Breach of contract. The court denied the motion to dismiss the breach-of-contract claim. It rejected NYCERS’s arguments based on the earlier state-court proceeding and declined to dismiss the claim on supplemental-jurisdiction grounds because the federal procedural-due-process claim remained in the case.

Intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court dismissed this claim for lack of jurisdiction. New York law requires a claimant suing New York City or one of its agencies for a tort claim to serve a notice of claim within 90 days after the claim arises. The complaint alleged that a filing had been made with the City Comptroller but did not allege when it was filed. The documents attached to NYCERS’s motion showed notices dated February 8, 2019, which was more than 90 days after the latest date on which the tort claim could have arisen. The court therefore concluded that the notice requirement was not adequately alleged and that it lacked jurisdiction over the state-law tort claim.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part NYCERS’s motion to dismiss. The dismissed claims were: the due-process claims relying on the New York Constitution; the § 1983 claim to the extent it alleged substantive due process violations; and the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. The motion was denied as to the breach-of-contract claim and the § 1983 claim to the extent it alleged a procedural-due-process violation. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motion at Docket Number 20.