A wage lawsuit against the company that handles paychecks for New York’s largest home-care program has produced one of the bigger settlement funds to touch the state’s caregiver workforce this year. The people it covers are not a distant industry: many of them are family members and neighbors who get paid through New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program to care for an aging relative, exactly the kind of arrangement an older New Yorker or a family caring for one may already be part of. Whether the money actually moves still depends on a single hearing date still two months away.
A $162 Million Fund, Four Counties, One Fiscal Intermediary
The case, Calderon et al. v. Public Partnerships, LLC, covers roughly 200,000 personal assistants who provided services through Public Partnerships LLC, known as PPL, the statewide fiscal intermediary for the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties between March 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026, according to class counsel’s case summary posted by Katz Banks Kumin LLP. The settlement fund totals at least $162 million, the same source states, covering wage claims tied to how those personal assistants were paid during that 14-month window. PPL processes payroll for personal assistants hired directly by Medicaid recipients under CDPAP, which lets a consumer choose almost anyone, including an adult child or other relative, to serve as a paid caregiver rather than using an agency-assigned aide.
Spread evenly across the roughly 200,000 personal assistants the settlement covers, the at-least-$162 million fund works out to a per-worker average above $800, though the actual distribution to any individual class member will depend on hours worked and pay records during the 14-month class period rather than an equal split. That structure is typical of a wage-and-hour class settlement, where the total fund reflects the aggregate underpayment claim rather than a flat amount owed to every worker regardless of how much they worked.
Before the Nov. 10 hearing arrives: A wage settlement large enough to name four counties and 200,000 personal assistants is exactly the kind of case that draws a copycat notice or an unsolicited call asking a class member to confirm personal details before the court has even signed off. The Settlement & Refund Recovery System’s four-date rule sorts a real Calderon notice from an imitation.
A Settlement Still Waiting On One Court Date
The settlement received preliminary approval on July 1, 2026, and notices describing it went out to class members around July 21, 2026, according to the case timeline posted on the official settlement website, PublicPartnershipsSettlement.com, which is administered by Atticus Administration. That same site sets the final approval hearing for November 10, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, case number 1:25-cv-02320. Until that hearing happens and the court signs off, the settlement is not final: preliminary approval lets the notice and objection process run, but it does not by itself authorize any payment to go out. Katz Banks Kumin LLP’s own case summary describes the settlement as not final “until after that notice period and final approval by the Court, which will require a number of months to complete,” language that matches the roughly four-month gap between the July notice mailing and the November hearing date…