Appellate Court Wins For Cuomo In Lawyer Pension Fight

We’ve written a lot about the fight in New York over lawyers in private practice seeking pension benefits for representing school districts and other local governments as “employees.” For example, see http://www.financialfraudlaw.com/lawblog/long-island-lawyer-pay-more-249k-settle-pension-abuse-allegations/467. 

Yesterday, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo obtained an appellate court victory in the battle. In both Matter of Roemer v. Cuomo and Matter of Hogan v. Cuomo, an intermediate state appellate court upheld subpoenas issued by Cuomo to attorneys who maintained private law practices while simultaneously providing services to various municipalities. In Roemer, the appellate court found that Cuomo “has authority to investigate potential fraud and illegality concerning the receipt of benefits from the public pension system, including efforts to misrepresent an independent contractor as an employee in order to qualify the individual for benefits.” The subpoena “seeks information relating to work for local governments performed by petitioner or his law firms and the compensation each received in exchange for such work, as well as information related to petitioner's retirement benefits. It is therefore relevant to the potential violations under investigation and ascertaining the amount of benefits improperly received, if any.”
 
The decisions are available at 2009 N.Y. Slip Op. 08120 and 2009 N.Y. Slip Op. 08105.