FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Lawsuit Alleges Undefined Standards, Opaque Medical Review and Unequal Treatment Allowed Pension Officials to Deny ADR After Conceding Officer Could No Longer Perform Full Police Duty
NEW YORK, N.Y. — October 5, 2026 — Eric Sanders, Esq., The Sanders Firm, P.C. has filed a civil-rights lawsuit on behalf of former New York City Police Officer Ilbey Aykac against the City of New York, the New York City Police Pension Fund, Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, Pension Fund Executive Director Kevin Holloran, members of the Pension Fund Board of Trustees, and members of the Article II Medical Board, alleging disability discrimination in the administration of Accident Disability Retirement benefits.
The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, New York County, does not merely challenge an unfavorable pension determination. It challenges a disability-retirement system that, according to the complaint, operates through inadequately defined standards, opaque training and guidance, substantial subjective discretion, and overlapping institutional authority that permits materially different treatment of disabled officers depending upon how decisionmakers choose to evaluate their medical conditions and causation evidence.
Aykac joined the NYPD on January 7, 2008, after successfully completing the Department’s medical and psychological examinations and being found qualified to perform the full duties of a police officer.
According to the complaint, Aykac sustained two significant line-of-duty injuries in 2019. On June 26, 2019, while riding as a passenger in an NYPD vehicle responding to an emergency, the vehicle was struck on the passenger side, injuring his cervical and lumbar spine and right hip. On November 7, 2019, he sustained another line-of-duty injury while attempting to secure a combative prisoner during an authorized strip search.
Aykac continued to experience cervical pain, radicular symptoms, restricted range of motion and functional limitations. His treating physicians repeatedly related his cervical condition to the line-of-duty trauma. After conservative treatment failed, he underwent a two-level C5-C7 anterior cervical discectomy and fusion on March 28, 2024.
The lawsuit alleges that the Article II Medical Board—Dr. Kathryn Ko, Dr. Bruce David and Dr. Damian Martino—initially rejected both Accident Disability Retirement and Ordinary Disability Retirement, repeatedly characterizing Aykac’s reported limitations as insufficiently supported by objective findings.
That position eventually became impossible to maintain.
After Aykac underwent cervical fusion surgery, the same Medical Board reversed its disability determination in November 2024 and concluded that the fusion and resulting restricted range of motion rendered him incapable of performing full police duty.
But the Board still denied Accident Disability Retirement.
The dispute then shifted from whether Aykac was disabled to whether his disabling cervical condition was sufficiently caused by his line-of-duty injuries.
The complaint alleges that this is precisely where the absence of meaningful standards became consequential.
Aykac had performed full police duty for more than eleven years before the 2019 accident. After the accident, he became symptomatic, underwent extensive treatment, failed conservative care, underwent cervical fusion surgery and was ultimately declared unable to perform full police duty. His treating physicians attributed his condition to the line-of-duty trauma.
Yet, according to the lawsuit, the Medical Board continued to deny Accident Disability Retirement without identifying or applying a defined standard addressing whether the accident precipitated, aggravated, accelerated or rendered symptomatic any pre-existing or chronic cervical pathology.
New York law has long recognized that a line-of-duty accident may constitute the natural and proximate cause of a disability where the accident precipitates a latent condition or aggravates a pre-existing condition.
Nevertheless, when Aykac’s ADR application ultimately reached the Pension Fund’s Board of Trustees, the City side refused to support his application. On August 13, 2025, the application was denied by a 6-6 vote, leaving Aykac on service retirement rather than Accident Disability Retirement.
DOI Findings Put the Pension System Under a Microscope
The lawsuit comes against the backdrop of a September 2026 investigation by the New York City Department of Investigation into the Police Pension Fund’s administration of Accident Disability Retirement.
According to the complaint, DOI found that the Pension Fund had not promulgated regulations further defining when a member is incapacitated for the performance of city service or duty.
DOI also found that the Article II Medical Board evaluates officers using generalized “essential functions of a police officer” rather than examining an applicant’s actual job duties.
More significantly, DOI concluded that additional regulations, training and guidance were necessary to promote consistent ADR determinations and that clear Medical Board training and guidance were necessary to ensure even-handed disability decisions.
DOI reported that it had “no visibility” into how the Medical Board was trained.
According to the complaint, DOI subpoenaed the Pension Fund in March 2026 for Medical Board training and guidance materials but had received neither responsive materials nor confirmation that such materials did not exist when DOI issued its report.
The lawsuit alleges that those institutional deficiencies are not abstract administrative problems. They directly affect whether disabled officers receive substantially enhanced Accident Disability Retirement benefits.
The John Chell Comparison
The complaint also points to the Pension Fund’s treatment of former NYPD Chief of Department John Chell as evidence of how flexible the Fund’s standards can become when decisionmakers choose to employ individualized analysis.
The lawsuit does not allege that Chell improperly received ADR, and it does not contend that rank itself is a protected characteristic under the Human Rights Laws.
Instead, the complaint uses Chell’s case to illustrate the degree of discretion built into the system.
According to the lawsuit, when evaluating Chell’s ADR application following an ankle injury, Pension Fund trustees engaged in an individualized discussion about what activities actually fell within the duties of the Chief of Department. The analysis included competing views about whether field activity constituted part of Chell’s leadership responsibilities.
Aykac alleges that no comparable flexibility was afforded to him.
Despite documented line-of-duty trauma, years of full-duty service before the accident, treating-physician causation opinions, failed conservative treatment, cervical fusion surgery and the Medical Board’s ultimate determination that he could no longer perform full police duty, the defendants allegedly imposed an exceptionally restrictive causation standard without identifying any published or consistently applied rule explaining what evidence was necessary to establish aggravation of a pre-existing condition.
“This case asks a basic civil-rights question: what happens when the government creates a disability-benefit system with enormous discretion but fails to establish sufficiently defined standards governing how that discretion will be exercised?” said Eric Sanders, attorney for Aykac and president of The Sanders Firm, P.C.
“If the Medical Board can first tell an officer that there is insufficient objective evidence that he is disabled, then later concede after cervical fusion surgery that he cannot perform police duty, the causation analysis cannot simply become another undefined barrier. There has to be a neutral rule. There has to be transparency. There has to be consistency. And there has to be a meaningful explanation for why the same system can employ individualized flexibility in one case while imposing an extraordinarily restrictive standard in another.”
Police Commissioner’s Dual Role Also Challenged
The lawsuit additionally challenges what it describes as an inherent structural conflict within the Police Pension Fund.
Under the statutory framework, the Police Commissioner may initiate a disability-retirement referral. The Police Commissioner simultaneously serves as Chairperson of the Pension Fund Board of Trustees that ultimately acts upon ADR applications and possesses a weighted vote on that Board. The Police Commissioner also exercises statutory authority concerning the appointment of the Pension Fund’s Executive Director.
Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch presently occupies the positions of both NYPD Police Commissioner and Chairperson of the Pension Fund Board of Trustees.
The complaint alleges that this structure places the head of the employing law-enforcement agency at multiple stages of a disability-retirement process affecting substantial employment and pension benefits, while the absence of sufficiently defined standards, transparent training and meaningful conflict safeguards magnifies the risk associated with that overlapping authority.
“This is bigger than one pension application,” Sanders said. “When government decisionmakers are determining whether injured police officers will receive one form of retirement benefit or another, hundreds of thousands of dollars can turn on how disability, aggravation and causation are interpreted. A system exercising that kind of power cannot operate on standards that expand and contract from applicant to applicant.”
Civil-Rights Claims Under State and City Law
Aykac brings disability-discrimination claims under both the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law.
The complaint alleges that the City, Pension Fund and individual defendants subjected Aykac’s disability, medical history, pre-existing cervical pathology, aggravation evidence and causation evidence to materially harsher scrutiny because of the nature, history, manifestations and perceived causation of his disability.
The lawsuit further alleges that the individual defendants participated in, facilitated, maintained, applied or adjudicated the challenged practices and thereby aided and abetted violations of the State and City Human Rights Laws.
Aykac demands a jury trial.
The action seeks compensatory and economic damages, including the past and future difference between the retirement benefits Aykac received and the ADR benefits he allegedly would have received absent discrimination; pension-related losses; emotional-distress damages; punitive damages against the individual defendants where legally available; declaratory relief; attorneys’ fees and costs; and appropriate equitable and injunctive relief.
The complaint also asks the Court to prohibit further disability-retirement determinations involving Aykac through subjective, undefined or inconsistently applied standards and, to the extent legally authorized, to require defined and transparent standards, appropriate training and guidance, and safeguards against institutional conflicts in the administration of Accident Disability Retirement benefits.
A separate Article 78 proceeding remains pending concerning the legality and rationality of Aykac’s individual ADR determination. The newly filed civil-rights action is broader. It challenges the allegedly discriminatory administration of the disability-retirement process itself under the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws.
“This lawsuit is about accountability in a system that makes life-changing decisions for injured police officers,” Sanders said. “If the Pension Fund expects its members to live with its decisions, then the Pension Fund must be able to identify the standards it uses, explain how those standards are applied, demonstrate that its medical decisionmakers are properly trained, and show that substantially similar evidence is being evaluated even-handedly. Government cannot demand deference to a process while refusing to define the rules of that process.”
The allegations contained in the complaint have not yet been adjudicated, and the defendants will have an opportunity to respond in court.
About The Sanders Firm, P.C.
The Sanders Firm, P.C. is a New York-based law firm focused on civil rights, immigration, employment discrimination, police misconduct, and other high-stakes matters. Its founder and president, Eric Sanders, Esq., is a retired NYPD officer who brings a rare inside perspective to the intersection of government power, public institutions, enforcement discretion, and constitutional accountability.
For more than twenty years, Sanders has counseled thousands of clients and handled complex matters involving police use of force, sexual harassment, retaliation, systemic discrimination, immigration consequences, and related civil-rights violations. He is widely recognized as a leading New York civil-rights attorney and a prominent voice on evidence-based policing, institutional accountability, equal justice, and rights-based immigration advocacy.
Media Contact
Eric Sanders, Esq.
The Sanders Firm, P.C.
30 Wall Street, 8th Floor
New York, New York 10005
(212) 652-2782
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Read the Summons with Verified Complaint
Read the DOI Report
