NYC Settles Workplace Smoking Suit with Former NYPD Detective [04/25-1]

Excerpts from: City settles cop smoking suit

By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA Newsday [04/24/05]

A retired detective who sued the city in a dispute over smoking in the workplace has won a settlement that he hopes will force the NYPD to be more sensitive to cops with serious health issues.

The settlement, believed to be among the first involving smoking in a city workplace, allows Peter Leslie to recover about $103,000 in back pay. It also allows for a paperwork change in Leslie's retirement date, from November 1998 to January 2002, the end of his 20th year. That change allows him to receive an extra $12,000 annually for the rest of his life. "I never wanted a huge settlement," said Leslie, now 51 and living in Wyoming, where he runs a delicatessen. "All I wanted was the pay I felt I was owed because I was forced to retire before I wanted to."

Leslie suffers from sarcoidosis, an ailment that typically affects the lungs and is exacerbated by smoke.

Leslie said that while the city did not acknowledge any wrongdoing in settling his case, he hopes that in the future it will more strictly enforce New York's no-smoking laws, even at agencies such as the NYPD where lighting up has long been a part of the culture of the workplace.

"The Police Department should fall in line with other police departments in the country that don't allow smoking," Leslie said. "Here it's still part of the Police Department culture."

Leslie said fellow cops routinely smoked in his presence - even after smoking was banned inside police facilities. In late 1998, soon after he said one police chief told him he couldn't do anything to help, Leslie decided to retire.

Leslie, who joined the force in 1982, last year filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan under terms of the Americans With Disabilities Act, contending, in part, that the department was required to accommodate his medical condition.

The veteran detective had been diagnosed in late 1996 with sarcoidosis.

There is no cure, though anyone afflicted with the illness can lead a normal life, provided they avoid smoke and other pollutants, particularly in enclosed spaces for extended periods of time.

Leslie remained out of work for almost a year - he was recovering from an unrelated hernia operation - and when he returned, investigating cases in the 112th Precinct, he said the NYPD did little to accommodate him.

The city did not discuss details of the case, though Georgia Pestana, head of the Labor and Employment Law Division for the city's Law Department, said the city "determined that settlement was in its best interest."

Kate O'Brien Ahlers, a spokeswoman for the Law Department, said that in general, the office works to notify city agencies when claims are made about stricter enforcement of city regulations. "That's part of our risk management effort," she said.

In another court case involving smoking, a judge ruled recently that a former inmate - the legendary numbers kingpin Raymond Marquez - can sue the city for not giving him a cell in a no-smoking section.

Marquez claims he was stricken with bladder cancer because of the secondhand smoke he breathed while being held at Rikers Island and the Manhattan Detention Center between January 1998 and January 2001.

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