Summary
This Connecticut Appellate Court opinion reviews a trial court's judgment affirming the denial of a disability pension application by the City of Waterbury Retirement Board and dismissing related breach of contract claims. The plaintiff, a former police officer injured on the job, argued that the city failed to properly offer him a qualifying alternative position and that the trial court committed plain error by not considering an unraised statute. The appellate court affirmed, finding substantial evidence supported the board's decision and deeming the plaintiff's additional claims inadequately briefed or unsupported.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the trial court committed plain error by failing sua sponte to consider General Statutes § 31-71f.
- Whether substantial evidence supported the determination that Cruz had been offered a qualifying alternative position under Waterbury Code of Ordinances § 35.035, thereby precluding a finding of a work-related disability under §§ 35.035 and 35.073.
- Whether Cruz was entitled to retroactive disability pension payments while his application was pending.
- Whether § 35.035 measures the 75 percent compensation threshold against the police officer's total compensation rather than the officer's base pay rate.
- Whether the City of Waterbury was a proper party to the administrative appeal.
- Whether the City breached the collective bargaining agreement by failing to provide disability pension benefits and whether the Retirement Board was a proper defendant to the contract claim.
Holdings
- The court declined to reach the merits because Cruz inadequately briefed the plain-error claim and therefore abandoned it.
- The trial court properly upheld the Retirement Board's determination that Cruz did not have a work-related disability because the City offered him a qualifying building facility coordinator position that he could perform and that paid at least 75 percent of his former police-officer base pay.
- The Board properly denied retroactive disability pension payments because Cruz was determined not to be eligible for disability benefits.
- Section 35.035 does not require the alternative position to pay at least 75 percent of Cruz's total compensation as a police officer; the plaintiff's interpretation was unsupported by the ordinance's language.
- The trial court properly dismissed the administrative appeal against the City because the City was not the administrative agency that rendered the challenged decision, and Cruz cited no authority permitting an appeal against it.
- The City did not breach the collective bargaining agreement because Cruz failed to establish a violation of the pension ordinances and therefore failed to establish a contractual breach.
- The trial court properly dismissed the breach of contract claim against the Retirement Board because the Board was not a party to the collective bargaining agreement.
Key quotations
“It is axiomatic that, [t]he plain error doctrine . . . is not . . . a rule of reviewability. It is a rule of reversibility.” (at 267)
“Analysis, rather than mere abstract assertion, is required in order to avoid abandoning an issue by failure to brief the issue properly.” (at 269)
“Ultimately, [t]he question is not whether the [reviewing] court would have reached the same conclusion but whether the record before the [agency] supports the action taken.” (at 272)
Factual background
Cruz, a Waterbury police officer, injured his dominant right hand while smashing a car window to apprehend a criminal suspect and could not return to full-time police work. After his employment was terminated on April 8, 2019, the police chief submitted a disability pension application on his behalf. The Retirement Board denied the application after finding that the City had offered Cruz a building facility coordinator position he could perform, with a base pay rate exceeding 75 percent of his former police-officer base pay. Cruz also claimed that the denial violated the city's ordinances and breached the collective bargaining agreement governing his employment.
Procedural history
Cruz, a former Waterbury police officer, challenged the Retirement Board's denial of his application for a work-related disability pension and asserted that the denial also breached a collective bargaining agreement incorporating the city's pension ordinances. After a hearing on the administrative appeal and a trial de novo on the contract claim, the Superior Court entered judgment for the defendants. The Connecticut Appellate Court affirmed.