Civil Service Psychiatric Fitness Records Counsel Should Preserve Before a Section 72 Exam

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Employment and Fitness

A Civil Service Law Section 72 fitness-for-duty dispute is usually won or lost on the file the employer assembled the day it placed the employee on involuntary leave. By the time a forensic psychiatrist is retained, that contemporaneous record is either there or it is not, and no later interview can manufacture it. The standard Section 72 actually imposes New York does not let a public employer place a tenured civil servant on involuntary leave for a psychiatric condition on a hunch. Civil Service Law §72(1) authorizes leave only when an employee "is unable to perform the duties of such employee's position by reason of a disability, other than a disability resulting from occupational injury

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