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City to Settle Pension Suit for Workers Called to Arms

New York City has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit that accused it of improperly withholding some pension benefits from police officers who were called to active military service after Sept. 11, 2001, newly filed court papers show.

The settlement would reach broadly across the city’s work force, covering current and former police officers as well as firefighters, teachers and other city employees who were summoned to active duty during those years.

The agreement, which was filed on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was reached after months of settlement negotiations between the city and the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, which represented three officers who filed the original complaints. The case was later broadened to seek class-action status.

“We view this case to be among the more important cases that we have brought,” Mr. Bharara said, “because it vindicates a principle, and that is that people who give to their country in the most impressive way that one can — through military service — are treated according to the rule of law.”

The settlement would require the city to change the way it calculates the earnings on which such pensions are based, which could increase future benefits for current employees and could result in the payment of back benefits to retirees.

The lawsuit contended that the city, in calculating the pension benefits, had violated federal law by failing to account for the increased earnings officers would have received had they not been called to active duty, including overtime, night-shift differentials and pay for worked vacations.

An assistant corporation counsel for the city, Keri Reid McNally, said Monday that the city had “initially disagreed with the United States’ interpretation of the statute at issue; however, we believe this resolution is fair and in the best interests of the city, N.Y.P.D., and Police Pension Fund as well as the proposed class members who served our country.”

The proposed settlement must still be approved by the judge assigned to the suit, Richard J. Sullivan.

The number of city employees who could be affected by the settlement and the amount of money they could receive was not immediately clear. As of December 2012, there were just over 1,500 members of the police force who had been called to active military service since Sept. 11, 2001; of those, 287 had retired, according to a court filing by Mr. Bharara’s office that cited the city’s data.

A city document dated in 2006 indicated then that several hundred fire, correctional, sanitation and social services employees had been called to military duty.

“The Police Department has far and away the highest number of military veterans and reservists among its ranks as compared to the other city agencies,” the city lawyer, Ms. McNally, said.

The original plaintiffs, all retired, had each been called to active duty while serving in the department, documents show. They included David Goodman, a detective assigned to the counterterrorism division who was a member of the Army Reserves, and Michael Doherty, a detective, and Robert D. Black, a sergeant, who were both Coast Guard reservists.

Mr. Goodman, 51, said Monday he was pleased that the city had agreed to the deal. “I think it’s certainly overdue,” he said, “and it’ll be good to see them correct this and make it right.”

Mr. Goodman joined the Police Department in 1992 and held the position of detective from 1999 until he retired in 2009, the lawsuit says. He was called to active duty on different occasions, serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere. In Jordan, he helped train Iraqi counterterrorism forces, the lawsuit says.

The settlement would not only help the men and women who had been affected in the past, Mr. Goodman said, but also “more importantly, it’ll fix it going forward, so reservists and guardsmen who get mobilized in the future won’t have to face the same issue.”

He added that the settlement “saves everybody a lot of unnecessary litigation to get to the exact same result.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: City to Settle Pension Suit For Workers Called to Arms. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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