Case Title: Kasper v. Board of Trustees of the Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund

Citation: 

Docket Number: a-33-99

State: new-jersey

Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Date: 2000-07-18T00:00:00Z

Document:
(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). Long, J., writing for a majority of the Court. This appeal interprets a provision of the Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund Law ( TPAF ), N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c), to determine whether plaintiff's injury occurr[ed] during and as a result of the performance of [her ] regular or assigned duties and, therefore, entitled her to an accidental disability retirement. Plaintiff, an educational media specialist with the Newark Board of Education, was enrolled in the Teacher's Pension and Annuity Fund. On May 31, 1991, plaintiff arrived early at school so that she could distribute media materials to classrooms prior to the official start of the school day. Her early arrival for this purpose was approved by the principal. After parking her car and walking across the street to the school, plaintiff began climbing the steps at the front of the building. As she was on the steps, a man grabbed her purse and she fell to the ground, incurring several injuries. Despite her injuries, plaintiff continued to work until September 1, 1996, when she applied for an accidental disability retirement. The Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund Board ( Board ) found her qualified for ordinary service retirement, but denied the application for accidental disability retirement because the incident that caused her disability did not occur during and as a result of the performance of [her] regular or assigned duties, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c). Plaintiff challenged the Board's determination and, following a hearing, the Administrative Law Judge recommended that the Board deny plaintiff's application for accidental disability retirement. The Board adopted that recommendation, and plaintiff appealed. The Appellate Division affirmed and explained that plaintiff's regular early arrival at work . . . did not convert the assault occurring outside the school building to a traumatic event occurring during the voluntary performance of her regular or assigned duties. The Supreme Court granted plaintiff's Petition for Certification. HELD: Plaintiff met the requirements for an accidental disability retirement, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c), because she had completed her commute to the school at the time of the assault and was engaged in conduct that was preliminary but necessary to her early workday duties. 1. Since significantly higher benefits are available to persons who are entitled to accidental disability retirement, as opposed to ordinary disability retirement, the eligibility requirements are more stringent. An ordinary disability retirement requires incapacitation, whereas an accidental disability retirement is authorized only if a member is permanently and totally disabled as a direct result of a traumatic event occurring during and as a result of the performance of his regular or assigned duties..., pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c). This is a different standard from the one that existed prior to the Legislature's amendment to the TPAF approximately thirty years ago. The prior standard was nearly identical to the one that was applicable to workers' compensation determinations, which awarded benefits if the disability arose out of and in the course of the employee's employment. By amending the TPAF, the Legislature intended to narrow the cases in which an employee would be eligible for accidental disability benefits. (Pp. 6-12) 2. The Legislature's intent in substituting the phrase occurring during and as a result of the performance of his regular or assigned duties for the original arising out of and in the course of his employment language is not found in the legislative history of the statute and the Court has not previously addressed the issue. Since the Legislature overhauled one provision rather than the entire TPAF statute, however, the Court must presume that the change evidenced an intent to depart from the old law, which had been strongly influenced by workers' compensation law. (Pp. 12-13) 3. Under workers' compensation law, the premises rule limited benefits to those who were injured through accidents that occurred on the employer's premises, and the going and coming rule precluded benefits for injuries that occurred during routine travel to and from work. The Legislature's substitution in the TPAF of the phrase during and as a result of the performance of his regularly and assigned duties for arising out of and in the course of employment reestablished the premises rule and eliminated judicially created exceptions to the going and coming rule for accidental disability retirement determinations. The amendment to the TPAF, therefore, resulted in a requirement that the accident must occur on premises owned or controlled by the employer, and not during activities encompassed within the myriad of coming and going exceptions that the courts had developed. (Pp. 13-17) 4. In general, agency and Appellate Division opinions have found that an employee will qualify for an accidental disability pension if he or she is injured on premises owned or controlled by the employer, during or as a result of the actual performance of his or her duties, or in an activity preparatory but essential to the actual duty. This standard applies irrespective of whether the injury occurs before, during, or after working hours. (Pp. 17-25) 5. Functions or duties that entitle an employee to an accidental disability pension include all activities engaged in by the employee in connection with his or her work, on the employer's premises, from the formal beginning to the formal end of the work day including on-premises lunch and restroom breaks so long as they occur within the confines of the workday at the work location. Furthermore, so long as the employee is at premises owned or controlled by the employer for the purpose of performing his or her regular duties, and not for some other purpose, a traumatic injury occurring prior to the start of the formal work day or after the end of the formal work day will entitle the employee to an accidental disability pension. The organizing principle is that one who is at the employer's premises solely to do his or her duty, and who, while doing what he or she is expected to do, is disabled by a traumatic accident, will qualify for inclusion in the class of those injured during and as a result of the performance of his regular or assigned duties. (Pp. 25-29) 6. Plaintiff had completed her commute to the school and was at the school, at the expected time, to distribute media materials in accordance with her required duties. At the moment of her injury, she was engaged in conduct that was preliminary but necessary to her early workday media distribution. Because all other statutory requirements were also met, plaintiff qualifies for an accidental disability pension. (Pp. 29-30) The judgment of the Appellate Division is REVERSED and the matter is REMANDED to the Board for proceedings consistent with the Court's opinion. JUSTICE COLEMAN filed a separate, concurring opinion, applying a different analysis to arrive at the same result. He would separate N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c) into seven elements, including that the traumatic event occurred during the performance of regular or assigned duties, and as a result of the performance of regular or assigned duties. A traumatic event meets the requirements of occurring during the performance of regular or assigned duties if the employee is doing what a person so employed may reasonably be expected to be doing at the time in order to fulfill the assignment and during the regular work day or within a reasonable time before or after the regularly or specially designated work day starts or ends. The element requiring that the traumatic event occur as a result of the performance of duties refers to legal causation or proximate cause, so that the work assignment must have been at least a contributing cause of the traumatic event when considering the totality of the circumstances surrounding the employment. Applying these standards, plaintiff is entitled to an accidental disability pension. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ, dissenting, is of the view that plaintiff was not engaged in her teaching duties or in taking preparatory steps to do so, and to hold otherwise writes the language, during and as a result of the performance of . . . regular or assigned duties out of the statute. JUSTICES O'HERN, STEIN, VERNIERO and LaVECCHIA join in JUSTICE LONG's opinion. JUSTICE COLEMAN filed a separate concurring opinion. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ filed a separate dissenting opinion. HELEN KASPER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE TEACHERS' PENSION AND ANNUITY FUND, Respondent-Respondent. Argued March 13, 2000-- Decided July 18, 2000 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. Helen Kasper argued the cause pro se. Mark J. Fleming, Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (John H, Farmer, Jr., Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney; Mary C. Jacobson, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel; Beatrice Michelle Albertson, on the brief). Richard A. Friedman argued the cause for amicus curiae, New Jersey Education Association (Zazzali, Zazzali, Fagella & Nowak, attorneys; Edward M. Suarez, Jr., on the brief). The opinion of the Court was delivered by LONG, J. The Board agreed and denied Ms. Kasper an accidental disability pension. In an unpublished opinion, the Appellate Division affirmed the Board's determination. Applying the traditional principle that a reviewing court must accord an agency determination great deference, the Appellate Division held that Kasper's regular early arrival at work . . . did not convert the assault occurring outside the school building to a traumatic event occurring during the voluntary performance of her regular or assigned duties. We granted Ms. Kasper's petition for certification. 162 N.J. 661 (1999). On appeal, she claims that the ALJ and the Appellate Division erred by not considering the impact of a 1986 amendment to N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c) that states: A traumatic event occurring during voluntary performance of regular or assigned duties at a place of employment before or after required hours of employment which is not in violation of any valid work rule of the employer or otherwise prohibited by the employer shall be deemed as occurring during the performance of regular or assigned duties. [Kane v. Board of Trustees, PFRS, 100 N.J. 651, 663 (1985).] In short, the legislature intended that an accidental disability pension ought to be awarded in cases of serious and permanent harm to the worker, in which the worker himself is exposed to a violent level of force or impact. Id. at 662. We have likewise recognized that the purpose behind the Legislature's change of the term result to direct result was intended to impose a stringent test of medical causation and . . . that the trauma . . . must at the very least be the essential significant or the substantial contributing cause of the disability. Korelnia v. Board of Trustees, PERS, 83 N.J. 163, 170 (1980) (citing Gerba, supra, 83 N.J. at 186). In both instances, we concluded that the legislative focus was to narrow the cases that would qualify for an accidental disability pension. Ultimately, in 1979, the definition of employment in the Workers' Compensation Act was amended to abrogate the judicially created exceptions to the going and coming rule. Senate Labor, Industry and Professions Committee, Joint Statement to Senate Committee Substitute for Sen. No. 802 and Assembly Committee Substitute for Assem. No. 840, at 2 (Nov. 13, 1979). Employment is now defined as commencing when an employee arrives at the employer's place of employment to report for work and shall terminate when the employee leaves the employer's place of employment, excluding areas not under the control of the employer. N.J.S.A. 34:15-36. As we noted, legislative history surrounding the 1966 and 1967 amendments to the accidental disability statute is sparse. Nevertheless, it seems clear that substitution of the language during and as a result of the performance of his regularly assigned duties for the phrase arising out of and in the course of was premonitory of the 1979 amendment to the workers' compensation statute and was intended to reestablish the integrity of the premises rule and eliminate the judicially created exceptions to the going and coming rule. Thus, under N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c), in order to qualify for an accidental disability pension, the accident must occur on premises owned or controlled by the employer, and not during activities encompassed within the myriad of coming and going exceptions that had sprung up. To assure that result, the Legislature added the caveat that the accident had to take place during and as a result of the performance of [the employee's] regular and assigned duties, _ a standard that could not be satisfied by a commuting accident. That standard must be understood as restorative and not transformative. IV. Several administrative decisions have addressed the issue before us. They are important because, in interpreting amendments to statutes, courts often give substantial weight to prior interpretations by the agency charged with implementing the statute. [T]he courts will generally show great deference to an agency's interpretation of a statute. A reviewing court should accord considerable weight to an executive department's construction of the statutory scheme it is entrusted to administer. The court will give a heightened degree of deference to the agency's interpretation when the statute is within the agency's field of expertise, and less deference to agency construction and interpretation of a statute which has not previously been subjected to judicial scrutiny or time-tested agency interpretations. [2 Am. Jur.2d Admin. Law 524 (1994) (footnotes ommitted).] See New Jersey Turnpike Auth. v. American Fed. of State, County and Mun. Employees, Council 73, 150 N.J. 331, 351 (1997); Merin v. Maglaki, 126 N.J. 430, 437 (1992). Furthermore, when the Legislature has not addressed the precise question of statutory meaning, the reviewing court may not simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation. Rather, if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute. To uphold an agency's construction of a statute that is silent or ambiguous with respect to the question at issue, a reviewing court need not conclude that the agency construction was the only one it permissibly could have adopted, or even the reading the court would have reached if the question initially had arisen in a judicial proceeding. [ 2 Am. Jur 2d Admin. Law 525 (1994) (footnotes omitted).] See Metromedia, Inc. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, 97 N.J. 313, 327 (1984). Although we might quibble with the application in one or two agency decisions, they uniformly incorporate the standard to which we have adverted: that an employee cannot be coming or going to work, but must be engaged in his or her employment duties on property owned or controlled by the employer in order to qualify for an accidental disability pension. See, e.g., Lewis-Miles v. Board of Trustees, PERS, TYP 8932-96, Initial Decision (July 16, 1998), adopted, (Aug. 20, 1998)See footnote 44 (holding that employee was not injured during and as result of performance of duties but was still commuting when, shortly after driving through front gate of employer's facility, her car slid on ice and struck oncoming car head-on; employee had not yet reached her normal work location, had not signed in, and had not begun her usual work duties); Estate of Matza v. Board of Trustees, TPAF, 96 N.J.A.R 2d (TYP) 224 (1996) (holding that teacher who slipped and fell on ice while walking across school parking lot towards school was on his way to work and was not yet in the performance of his duties at the time of the incident ); Loftus v. Board of Trustees, TPAF, 95 N.J.A.R 2d (TYP) 14 (1995) (concluding that teacher, who was home sick but was required to visit school in afternoon to drop off students' grades, was not injured during and as result of duties when she crashed her car in front of school building); Osborne v. Board of Trustees, PFRS, 93 N.J.A.R 2d (TYP) 1 (1993) (denying compensation to police officer who was on his way to work for 10:30 start time and was injured in car accident at 10:27, even though officer subsquently used police car radio, that was rountinely used to respond to calls while off-duty, to report accident and then directed traffic until other officers arrived); Osinga v. Board of Trustees, PERS, 92 N.J.A.R 2d (TYP) 16 (1992) (finding that school crossing guard was not injured during and as result of regular and assigned duties because, although near crossing corner, was still en route from home when she fell); Woods v. Board of Trustees, PERS, 92 N.J.A.R 2d (TYP) 160 (concluding that public works inspector hurt in car accident while driving from project site to office was injured during and as result of his regular duties); Fulco v. Board of Trustees, 3 N.J.A.R. 298 (TYP) (1982) (teacher who was injured opening windows in her classroom on very hot day twenty minutes to half hour prior to start of official school day was not injured during and as result of her duties). IX. That said, it is clear that both the Board and the Appellate Division diced things too finely in concluding that there were no duties for Ms. Kasper to perform until she actually entered the school building, and that she was still on her commute to work. Ms. Kasper had completed her commute when she was injured. She was at the school, at the expected time, to distribute media materials as she was required to do. She had parked her car, crossed the street to the school, and was negotiating the stairs, in an attempt to enter the building, when she was assaulted. At that moment, she was engaged in conduct that was, in every sense, preliminary but necessary to her early workday media distribution. Ms. Kasper's situation is indistinguishable from Officer Pollara's ascent of the staircase to report for duty. All other statutory requirements having been met, she qualified for an accidental disability pension for the injury resulting from the traumatic event that befell her. Contrary to our dissenting colleague's view, that outcome gives full effect to the restorative language of the accidental disability statute. SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY A- 33 September Term 1999 Petitioner-Appellant, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE TEACHERS' PENSION AND ANNUITY FUND, Respondent-Respondent. Coleman, J., concurring in the Court's judgment. I write separately because I would use a slightly different analytical approach to reach the same ultimate conclusion as the Court: that Kasper has satisfied the statutory requirements for an accidental disability pension. HELEN KASPER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE TEACHERS' PENSION AND ANNUITY FUND, Respondent-Respondent. PORITZ, C.J., dissenting. I agree with the majority's legal analysis and its conclusion that Helen Kasper's injury occurred at a place of employment. However, I cannot accept the majority's conclusion that Ms. Kasper was injured during and as a result of the performance of [her] regular or assigned duties. N.J.S.A. 18A:66-39(c). Ms. Kasper was injured as she climbed the front steps to the school. The majority holds that the injury occurred during and as a result of the performance of [her] regular or assigned duties because her presence on the premises was mandated. Ante at ___ (slip op. at 26). In my view, Ms. Kasper was neither engaged in her teaching responsibilities, In re Carlson, 174 N.J. Super. 603, 607 (App. Div. 1980) (holding that statute covers teacher injured after bell had rung and when teachers required to perform certain functions), nor taking any steps preparatory to carrying out those responsibilities, Pollara v. Board of Trustees, PFRS, 183 N.J. Super. 505, 511 (App. Div. 1982) (holding that statute covers police officer injured while performing duties in preparation for beginning of shift). To find otherwise effectively writes the language, during and as a result of the performance of . . . regular or assigned duties out of the statute. See Paper Mill Playhouse v. Millburn, 95 N.J. 503, 521 (1984) (directing court to avoid construction of statute that renders any part of it inoperative, superfluous, or meaningless). Accordingly, I dissent. NO. A-33 HELEN KASPER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE TEACHERS' PENSION AND ANNUITY FUND, Respondent-Respondent. DECIDED July 18, 2000 Chief Justice Poritz