New York City Will Pay $28 Million to People Strip-Searched a Second Time at 100 Centre Street After Already Being Searched Leaving Rikers — the Money Splits by Number of Searches, the City's Own Transport Records Set Your Count, and Claims Close November 26

The class, as the June 29 order conditionally certified it, is “all individuals in the custody of the New York City Department of Correction who were strip searched upon arrival at the Manhattan Court Division after having been strip searched prior to departing Rikers Island for court during the Class Period.” The Class Period has two versions. For people DOC classified as Enhanced Security — the agreement defines that as Red ID, enhanced restraint status and centrally monitored case status — it runs from March 28, 2020 through February 29, 2024. For everyone else it runs from October 1, 2022 through February 29, 2024. The March 28, 2020 start is three years before the case was docketed, on March 28, 2023.

You do not have to prove any of it. The agreement builds a Class List — “the agreed-upon spreadsheet of Class Members, which shall include the dates on which, and the number of times, each such Class Member was transported from Rikers to Manhattan Criminal Court during Class Periods” — and anyone on it is presumptively a class member. Excluded are people who already settled a claim over these searches with the City, the individual plaintiffs represented by Oddo & Babat before Judge Kaplan (listed in Exhibit A to the notice), and anyone whose claims are barred by an enforceable release.

One order explains why the mail reached people whose arrests were later sealed. On February 10, 2026, in furtherance of an unsealing order she had entered on June 10, 2024, Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky held that the sealing requirements of New York Criminal Procedure Law §§ 160.50 and 160.55 do not apply “for the limited purpose of allowing” DOC to pull the full names, dates of birth, NYSID numbers, book-and-case numbers, last known addresses, e-mail addresses and closest-contact details of everyone brought from Rikers to Manhattan Criminal Court in the class period — including contact details DOC had from other incarceration periods. Distribution of that information is limited to the Corporation Counsel, class counsel, DOC and the administrator (ECF 79).

The agreement defines a Class Fund of $28,575,000: a $28,000,000 Distribution Amount “which is the total amount available to distribute to Class Members who file valid claims,” plus $575,000 in Settlement Costs — $37,500 to each of the two class representatives, Raymond Lewis and Frederick Ortiz, and $500,000 for administration, escrowed within fourteen days of preliminary approval, with anything unspent reverting to the City.

Attorneys' fees are outside all of that. The long-form notice says class counsel, German Rubenstein LLP, “will ask the Court to award attorneys' fees not to exceed 33.33% of the settlement payout, including class payments, service awards, and attorneys' fees,” that the City has reserved the right to object, and that “if approved, these amounts will not be deducted from the Class Fund.” Under the agreement the City pays the fee within thirty days after the fee order becomes final. On the $28,075,000 in class payments and service awards, one-third is about $9.4 million; read literally, the notice's wording folds the fee itself into the base, which would put the request higher. The actual number arrives with the final-approval motion, due within thirty days after the claim deadline.

Uncashed checks do not go back to the City either. The administrator may void checks not cashed within 180 days, and the agreement says “money from uncashed checks shall not be returned to the City” — it is reissued, added back to the fund for a further pro rata split, or, if that is impractical, awarded cy pres. The non-monetary term is a sentence: DOC agrees to add a Note to Directive 4508R-E stating that after a strip search on leaving a housing facility, a person in custody “should not be strip searched upon arrival at the court division unless there is reasonable suspicion that the PIC possesses contraband, or there was an interruption or break in DOC custody.”

Paragraph 54 is the whole formula: “Each claimant's share will be determined by the number of times they were strip searched upon arrival at Manhattan Court Division after having already been strip searched prior to departing Rikers, divided by the total number of such searches experienced by all claimants combined.” Every qualifying search is one unit; Mr. Lewis's eight would be eight. What the agreement, the order and the notice do not say is how many people are on the Class List or how many transports it records. Until the claims are counted after November 26, the per-search figure is unknowable.

The scale is easy to state. If claimants between them submit 20,000 qualifying searches, each search is worth $1,400; at 50,000 searches, $560; at 100,000, $280. Only the claimed total matters — people who never file do not dilute the fund.

Two comparisons exist in the same city. The Central Booking settlements pay up to $475 for every detention from a fund of up to $21.5 million, with claims closing October 19, 2026 — a per-event figure written into that agreement, which this one does not have. And in 2010 the City settled McBean v. City of New York, over strip searches of non-felony detainees on admission to Rikers, for $33 million; that agreement was reported at the time as paying $1,800 to $2,900 per person and was built on the assumption that only 10 to 15 percent of the class would apply. If the response here is anything like that, a pro rata fund works in the other direction from a fixed one: a low claim rate pushes the per-search figure up for the people who do file.

The claim portal at NYStripSearchSettlement.com offers four routes: file online with the Claim ID and PIN printed above your name on the notice; download a personalized form with them and mail it; or either of those without a Claim ID and PIN. Mail goes to Lewis, et al. v. City of New York, et al. Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 301132, Los Angeles, CA 90030-1132 — the pre-paid envelope in the claim packet works — and must be postmarked by November 26, 2026. The notice lists what establishes identity: name, NYSID and/or book-and-case number if known, Social Security or tax identification number if known, date of birth if known, and, for anyone now in New York State custody, the Department Identification Number, facility name and facility state. A timely but incomplete form gets one 30-day cure period. A deceased class member's estate may claim through an appointed representative with proof of death and of appointment.

Someone who is not on the Class List can still claim by giving the administrator a name, NYSID or book-and-case number, Social Security number and date of birth if known, and “a reasonable approximation of the date” of the search; the Corporation Counsel and class counsel then confer on whether the claim has merit and the list is amended.

The City keeps four kinds of deductions and no others: New York child support liens, docketed parking judgments, income and excise tax warrants over $1,000, and Environmental Control Board judgments. Any award over $10,000 is reported to the New York State Office of Victim Services under Executive Law § 632-a; if OVS restrains a payment, the claimant still receives ten percent, which the statute exempts. ClaimDepot, which reviewed the claim form, lists PayPal, Venmo, a paper check, and JPay for people still in DOC custody as the payment choices. Timing: the City must deposit the Distribution Amount sixty days after the Final Approval Order. The hearing is January 29, 2027, so the earliest realistic payments are spring 2027 — later if anyone appeals.

The class complaint is dated March 2, 2023 and was docketed March 28, 2023, naming the City, DOC, Commissioner Louis A. Molina, two correction officers identified only as “John” Lipenski and “John” Smith, and 25 Doe officers. Its second named plaintiff, Frederick Ortiz, then 42 and held at the Vernon C. Bain Center awaiting trial, describes the same double search on January 27, 2023, told by the officer that he was “following a formal procedure.” No contraband was found on either man at either end.

On September 9, 2025 Judge McMahon dismissed the action as “settled in principle,” without prejudice to reopening within thirty days if the settlement fell through (ECF 74). The February 10, 2026 unsealing order followed. The parties filed their joint motion for preliminary approval on June 2, 2026 (ECF 80); the court reopened the case on June 16 (ECF 83) and signed the preliminary approval order on June 29 (ECF 84), setting the Notice Date at sixty days out — late August — and the claim, opt-out and objection deadlines at ninety days after that, which is November 26. The motion for final approval is due within thirty days after the claim deadline; the Final Fairness Hearing is January 29, 2027 at 10:00 a.m. before Judge McMahon in Courtroom 24A, 500 Pearl Street, where the fee request and the two service awards will also be decided.