PPL CDPAP Wage Settlement: No Claim Form, Automatic Pay

What this settlement is about

Calderon v. Public Partnerships, LLC is a wage and employee-benefits lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (case 1:25-cv-02320). The named plaintiffs, personal assistants who worked in New York's home care system, allege that PPL underpaid and shorted benefits to caregivers during its rollout as the state's single statewide fiscal intermediary for CDPAP.

Two terms matter here. CDPAP, the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, is a New York Medicaid program that lets a person who needs home care hire, train, and supervise their own caregiver, often a family member or friend, instead of going through a traditional home care agency. A fiscal intermediary is the company that actually employs and pays that caregiver on paper: it processes payroll, withholds taxes, and administers benefits, even though the consumer directs the day-to-day work. In 2025, New York moved the entire CDPAP program onto a single statewide fiscal intermediary, and PPL won that contract. The lawsuit alleges the transition itself produced wage and benefit shortfalls for the caregivers PPL took over as employer.

As of July 2026, the case has preliminary settlement approval but not final approval. A judge signed off on the proposed deal and the notice process on July 1, 2026, which let the settlement administrator, Atticus Administration, begin telling class members about it. Notice went out starting July 21, 2026. That is different from final approval, which is a separate hearing where the judge decides whether the deal is actually fair before any money moves.

Where it stands right now

The case is in the pending final approval stage. Preliminary approval cleared on July 1, 2026, and notice reached class members on July 21, 2026. Nothing else has to happen for now except the deadline window that follows notice: class members who want to leave the settlement or object to it have until September 19, 2026 to do so.

After that, the case moves to a final approval hearing on November 10, 2026. That hearing has not happened yet. The judge could approve the settlement as written, require changes, or in a small number of cases reject it. Until final approval is granted, no payments go out. There is currently no confirmed payout date, so anyone hearing rumors of a specific payment month should treat that as unconfirmed until PPL, Atticus, or the court says otherwise.

Who is actually in the class

This is the detail most likely to be missed, so read it twice if you work in home care anywhere in New York. The settlement class is not every CDPAP worker in New York State. It covers current and former personal assistants who were paid through PPL as the statewide fiscal intermediary for CDPAP services performed in New York City, Nassau County, Suffolk County, or Westchester County, at any time between March 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026.

That is a downstate class. If you worked CDPAP hours through PPL in, say, Erie County, Monroe County, or anywhere else outside those four downstate areas, this settlement as verified does not cover you, even though you were paid by the same company. If you are unsure which county your CDPAP work was billed under, that is worth checking against your own pay records or asking PPL directly, since the class definition turns on where the work was performed, not where you live.

How much people realistically get

The settlement's own summary splits the money into two pieces, not one lump $162 million figure. The reliable headline number is the Total Initial Monetary Payment of $157.5 million, made up of $40.5 million in general damages, $25 million in Wage Parity compensation previously allocated to the MEC health plan, and $92 million tied to accrued paid time off. On top of that sits a Second Settlement Payment of $4.5 million or more, held in a reserve fund and reconciled against a separate Additional MEC Fund accounting that has not happened yet. Depending on how that later accounting comes out, some, all, or none of that reserve could reach the class rather than go back to PPL. The $162 million figure that shows up in headlines is these two pieces added together; only the $157.5 million piece is a fixed amount the class is actually guaranteed.

Before any of that reaches individual workers, court-approved deductions come out of the fund first. Class Counsel has said it will ask the court to approve attorneys' fees of up to 15% of the settlement fund, plus reimbursement of litigation costs and the costs of administering the settlement. The Long Form Notice also describes a planned $15,000 service award to each of the four class representatives, Philip Calderon, Allison Fields, Farshad Pinchasi, and Dana Folgar, for a combined $60,000. None of these amounts are final. They still need court approval at the November 10, 2026 hearing, and a class member who disagrees with the fee request specifically can object to it even while accepting the rest of the settlement.

That is a ceiling for the whole class either way, not a per-worker number, and no official average or per-person estimate has been published as of July 2026.

What is known is how payments will be calculated. Individual amounts are expected to be formula-driven, based on factors like each person's actual hours worked during the class period, whether they were eligible for a sign-on bonus tied to the PPL transition, and how minimum essential coverage (MEC) and paid time off (PTO) benefits were allocated to them. In practice that means two caregivers with different hours or different benefit eligibility will likely see different payments, even though they are both in the class. Anyone who tells you a flat dollar figure for what the average worker gets is going beyond what has actually been confirmed.

No claim form, no proof needed

This is the single most useful fact on this page. Unlike most class-action settlements, there is no claim form to fill out and no documentation to submit. Payment is automatic and is expected to be calculated from PPL's own payroll and time records for each class member. You do not need to prove your hours, gather pay stubs, or file anything to be considered for payment, assuming you fall within the class definition above.

Because there is no claim process, the deadlines that apply to most settlements simply do not exist here in the usual sense. What does exist, and what you do need to act on if you want to, are the opt-out and objection deadlines described below.

Opting out versus objecting: these are different things

Both deadlines fall on September 19, 2026, but they are opposite actions and it is easy to confuse them.

Opting out means removing yourself from the settlement entirely. If you opt out, you give up any right to an automatic payment from this $162 million fund, but you keep your individual right to sue PPL on your own over the same wage and benefit claims. Most class members who believe the settlement fairly compensates them do not need to do anything to opt out; staying in is the default.

Objecting means staying in the class, keeping your right to an automatic payment, but formally telling the judge in writing that you think some part of the settlement is unfair, whether that is the fund size, the formula, attorney's fees, or something else. An objection does not remove you from the class or block your payment; it is a way to be heard before the November 10, 2026 final approval hearing.

What to do if you are not sure you are covered, or if the settlement does not apply to you

If you worked CDPAP hours through PPL outside of New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, or Westchester, or outside the March 1, 2025 to April 30, 2026 window, this settlement as currently defined does not include you. That does not mean you have no wage claim; it means this particular case is not the vehicle for it, and you would need to look at your own pay records or talk to an employment attorney about options specific to your situation.

For any home care worker, downstate or not, it is worth understanding that New York sets regional minimum wage floors that specifically call out home healthcare aides as a covered category, and those rates differ between New York City and Long Island/Westchester versus the rest of the state. That baseline exists independent of this settlement and applies to ongoing pay, not just this case.

A note on taxes

Whether a settlement payment is taxable depends on what the payment is actually replacing. Amounts that represent back wages are generally treated differently than amounts for other kinds of harm, and the IRS publishes general guidance on how settlement proceeds are categorized for tax purposes. Because this case involves alleged wage and benefit shortfalls, any payment you receive could be reported in a way that affects your taxes. This page is not tax advice; if you receive a payment, keep any tax documents PPL or the administrator sends you and talk to a tax professional about how to report it.