Judge: NYCOSH Not Entitled To City Injury Data

By ARI PAUL

A Manhattan Supreme Court Justice has tossed out a lawsuit against the Bloomberg administration brought by a labor group seeking information from the Mayor's Office on public employee work-related injury and illness data under the Freedom of Information Law.

JOEL SHUFRO: Ruling harms public health.

The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health sued the city in October after filing a FOIL request in May regarding material not included in a city report about Workers' Compensation in order to advocate for risk-reduction programs, the group's attorney said. The request was denied by the city, as was an appeal.

Confidentiality Issue

The Bloomberg administration had argued that some of the information NYCOSH requested was barred from disclosure for reasons of confidentiality. In July, Assistant Corporation Counsel Jeffrey Friedlander told NYCOSH Executive Director Joel Shufro in a letter that his office did not maintain a record with all the information sought under the FOIL request, adding that the city was not required to create a new record.

"Respondents have met their burden by articulating specific justification that the material sought by petitioner is either not maintained by the Mayor's Office or exempt from disclosure by the Law Department," Justice Eileen A. Rakower wrote in her decision.

Citing the law and past cases, she continued, "Additionally, an agency may not divulge information that would constitute 'an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy' such as 'information of a personal nature contained in Workers' Compensation record, except as provided by Section 110-A of the Workers' Compensation Law.'''

Privacy Worry

Because NYCOSH was asking for specific job titles in worker injury cases, the administration argued that the public would be able to determine the names of the persons associated with those cases.

"That information could have been used to obtain the identity of some of the workers who were injured," said Assistant Corporation Counsel Chevon Brooks. "If we had not prevailed, the ramifications could have been pretty serious for the employees of the city, in that the city would have been obliged to turn over 16,000 injured employees' information and that would have potentially compromised their privacy."

NYCOSH called the decision a setback to its ability to combat against job-related injuries and illnesses in the city's workforce. It is planning to appeal the decision.

'Ruling Hurts City'

"We believe that the court decision will result in workers not having the information they need to develop programs that could allow the city to eliminate the most-hazardous jobs," said Mr. Shufro. "We are back in the situation now where the city has no safety and health program [and] no means of developing an effective one because they can't identify the most dangerous job titles. We think this is bad public-health policy."