JOHN P. COSGROVE v. CITY OF WATERBURY et al., SC 17999

SCOTT J. O'CONNOR v. CITY OF WATERBURY et al., SC 18003

Judicial District of Waterbury 

      Employment; Municipalities; Estoppel; Whether a Disability Pension Equal to a Service Pension Improperly Fails to Compensate an Employee for his Disability.  The plaintiffs are former Waterbury police officers who submitted applications for disability retirement to the defendant city.  The city's retirement board approved the applications and awarded the plaintiffs disability pensions in amounts equal to that which they would be entitled to receive as service pensions under the applicable collective bargaining agreement.  The plaintiffs appealed the retirement board's decisions to Superior Court, claiming that the disability pension awards wrongly failed to include any amounts in recognition of their injuries and resulting disabilities.  They claimed that Downey v. Retirement Board, 66 Conn. App. 105 (2001), in which the Appellate Court found error in a disability pension award premised on the employee's years of service, stands for the proposition that it is an abuse of discretion for a retirement board to award a disability pension in an amount equal to a service pension because such an award fails to compensate the employee for his disability.  The trial court dismissed the plaintiffs' appeals, finding that their pension awards were properly calculated pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement and that Downey was distinguishable.  The court noted that the contract language in Downey differed from that at issue here and that the ruling in Downey was premised on the court's finding that, in that case, the retirement board completely disregarded evidence of the employee's disability in rendering its award.  The court noted that, in these cases, the retirement board reviewed the plaintiffs' medical records and gave due consideration to the plaintiffs' disabilities prior to making its decisions.  The plaintiffs appeal.  They claim that the court improperly found that Downey does not mandate that they receive as disability pensions some additional amount over and above that which they would be entitled to receive as service pensions.  O'Connor, who suffers from hypertension, also argues that the court improperly rejected his claim that the city was estopped from awarding him a disability pension of less that seventy-six percent of his annual compensation.  He claims that it has been the city's longstanding custom to award heart and hypertension disability pensions at the seventy-six percent rate, that such custom induced him to believe that he would receive the same pension and that he suffered harm in relying on the city's implied promise.