next case on the call the docket is agenda number twenty three case number one eleven thirty eight no whack versus the city of country club hills counsel for the  and please identify your name for the record they please the court in opposing counsel my name is john murphy i am the attorney for the city of country club hills the appellant in this case good morning this is the third time this court is called upon to interpret the public safety employees disability benefits act which we all call you perceive them in the croatia case this court resolve the question of what's a catastrophic injury meaning an injury which forces a policeman or a fireman to take a disability pension retirement the court currently has under advisement that gaffney or lynn fire protection district cases which deals with the second issue of whether or not a life training exercise is responding to an emergency so that becomes a qualifying injury for purposes  this case sets forth the at another issue and the issue in this case is whether pacy above requires an employing municipality to reimburse a disabled firefighter for the fire or strike at police officer for his share of health insurance costs incurred during the period of time from the initial date of the injury to the date the employee retires this is a pure question of statutory construction because we come before the court on a stipulated set of facts and accordingly the the court's review this why is in september first two thousand and six the date on which mr nowhere became eligible receivable your honor that goes back to your opinion in crowing catastrophic injury is now defined as a result of crowell as an injury which forces that employee to retire the language that you quote from the pension board's opinion deals with the relationship between receiving pension board benefits receiving those peta benefits and workers compensation benefits but if we follow this point through crawl we holds that a catastrophic injury is  which forces enter the jewel in your honour's opinion to take the line of duty disability the word disability is really an adjective it forces the officer to take a line of duty disability retirement pension when did mr know it then begin collecting if this ability immediately after the pension board's decision it was he paid any retroactive pension benefit in september thousand were you know because you'll see the but the pension board opinion there are offsets because keep in mind your honor during that first year the officer received full pay under peta so your run he the one year expires until the date the pension board decided there's worker's compensation so the pension law is designed to avoid double payment to the lawyer and i'm sure the claimant and then really growth that is bet is correct because the the it's two different goals one law and make sure that the officer continues to receive his money while he's still employ ceiba deals with the relationship between a former officer and the former employee from that date the date that the pension board makes its decision saying that unfortunately we agree with that here's what happened your honor the officer was hurt and you know it i think everybody recalls at the time of the injury the city had a collective bargaining agreement with with the teamsters where the city pays eighty percent of the health insurance the employee pays twenty so for nine injured officers it's just the payroll deduction like you know social security or anything like that peta says the officer has to be paid on the same terms as if he's not hurt so during that total in this case approximately eight thousand dollars between seventy five hundred and eighty thousand dollars but i would have to say that eleven minutes malique thinks it involves a lot more because of the impact that it would out from your lips to the court's conference  i'm agreeing with you because that's the thrust of our case the statute doesn't say that in addition the employer will reimburse the officer for his share of the health insurance premiums incurred during the period when he was still employed by the minister pallete that's what i believe justice hawkins opinion fell off the tracks you will recall that the appellate court's opinion said that well we don't see anything in the statute that says they don't have to do it that in my view is not the way it should dish year he's supposed to review the statute because that gets involved in speculation and putting  gloss on the language of the statute that's just not there i think in terms of the plain english the statute i think kind of figure out a normal argument when you're dealing just with words and there's not a heck of a lot of facts to talk about how not to be redundant and how to give a good view i think the best way to look at this we're talking about two contracts when i'm an employee of the city i have a contract of employment and that contract says you come to work you do your job we pay you a salary we give you health insurance you have to pay some of that i get hurt in spite of all my efforts i'm forced to retire at the age of thirty after serving and protecting you the legislature then has in effect imposed a new contractual relationship on between my client the city and opposing counsel client the now former employee that contract says if you were hurt chasing a bad guy like this case and if it turns out unfortunately that you have to take a retirement for that because of that catastrophe that's what we're talking about this poor guy now has to take a retirement and may not get another job may not get health insurance at that point the law imposes a new contractual relationship between the former employee and the former employer that's the essence of to see them and that you know that's my language argument first there's nothing in there that says it and that leads us to of my legislative history argument everything that was relevant to this court's opinion in the quote we case is equally relevant in terms of this present case the i would say that simply because the language isn't there the court shouldn't read it to be there but beyond that all of the legislative display at the bates from the two house sponsored ten house and down and down who was the senate sponsor said this is something we have to do because of nine eleven in federal funding and if an officer is killed or hurt in the line of duty needing a pension we're going to continue his health insurance the very purpose of the law was to make sure that our first responders end up losing their job because of serving and protecting us are not naked going forward on health insurance and that's what country club hills did in this case once that once it evolved that the rehab wasn't going to work any an officer no act just couldn't couldn't do it anymore the pension board awarded the pension we followed crawley and he gets his retire free health insurance for the rest of his life we we understand that bite that bullet and that serves a good social purpose but there's nothing in the law and there's nothing in the logic of the law which would say in addition while the employment relation existed we're go you back we're going to make the city pay you back that money you know one of the things that strikes me in the legislative debates is that the senate sponsor senator donahue said i am not a big believer in unfunded mandates i don't like unfunded mandates on local government but i think this is important had there been an intent of this sponsor to have what i call the claw back requirement requiring the city to pay back its health insurance money or premiums there would have been at least one worker who have been something mentioned about it so maybe the cities and villages could have weighed in on that argument but that didn't happen so that the absence of any language in the statute  combined with the absence of any reference in the legislative debate combined with the logic of what perceived is all about all leads us to the answer that it is strictly a going forward benefit measured from when from the date of the catastrophe and when does the catastrophe right that it ripens according to crowley when that pension board says we've looked at the medical records you are you can't fast pitching anymore you cannot serve as a police officer anymore and you're going to retire that at that point the officer needs the insurance safety net not before then why because he's still an employee he's still on our benefits he still is getting his health insurance from the city of country club hills by virtue of the employment relationship the ceiba is an exception to to the rule that when the still an employee of the country club hills police department still receiving benefits still accruing seniority and the purpose of the salary schedule that's statutory and that's under some of the so he was still an employee to whom we were obligated because the worker's comp benefits equal his salary not after pita workers comp is i think it's sixty five percent or two thirds right right in that neighborhood i think part of the trade  up i don't think he has to pay state income taxes but it's not one hundred percent certainly maybe i missed of the i don't know if you misspoke you're position is that we're looking at the day of declaration of disability receiver purposes by the  get it in right now only i thought you said the opposite not all right maybe i missed it now it's let me make myself absolutely clear at the time the pension board determines that he has suffered a line of duty disability that means he retires that's the date the date of the pension board decision meaning that as of now he's retired from the country club hills police department that triggers the  argument that the retirement is when the board determines the moving forward the kind of disability pension he will have however we're struggling and i think with the fact that the that order says it is effective in september of all sense that what does that mean that means that deals with the relationship between the receipt of money for from the city and the offsets that occur under the pension law under forty i'll see s five slash three dash one fourteen at the statute says that an officer who was injured in the line of duty shall be entitled to a disability retirement pension let me just kind of back up to clarify my point i made in response to justice promises question it the statute says he had a straffing injury this that the injury a bad knee the bad back is not catastrophic the catastrophe does not occur until the time the pension board has adjudicated the fact that he's not coming back to work he is he is permanently disabled and can no longer come back to employment as a police officer that's the date so that's the date the the the the date of the pension board decision as opposed to the the what they claim the effective date of the injury certainly the pension board's decision certainly doesn't answer the question of the complete absence of statutory language calling for reimbursement it's simply it we don't know if the guy's not coming back to work until the final decision of the pension board and at that point the employment relation is if he is the police officer on the police department's payroll during the period between september of zero six and october or eight for the first year he is on our payroll because of our obligation under the accident and health insurance and can see by police officers continuance privileges how statutes are requiring that municipalities provide continuing coverage for police officers after they retire and the sims very specific discussion of what day that occurs the retirement or disability of a police officer in terms of their health insurance their retirement or disability period of a police officer means it means the period which begins on the day the police officer is removed from in a municipality is police departments he will because of the occurrence of any of the following events three the police officers disability is established under the only pension called so at least in terms of how insurance is looked at there's this significance of the officer leaving the payroll on a certain day when the board just decides disability under the pension so that's my question was he on the payroll in that interim period before the board made its determinations of disability he was on unpaid status because he was receiving worker's compensation i believe the statute you're referring to your honor deals with a general rule that retired or disabled police is no longer on the payroll due to the disability but otherwise you're you're dealing with the happenstance of when the of of when the city's obligation would arise i mean then then we're saying well perhaps the obligation doesn't arise during the first year because he's getting full pay in his honor in his honor for pay status maybe it arises after the first year because he's not part pay status and because it's a  he's getting it indirectly through workers compensation those maybes your honor suggests to me that the legislature never contemplated these issues never contemplated parsing  out as between the date of the injury the date peeta expires how long it takes the gentleman to get a final determination by the pension board does it does it take one year or five years those things simply weren't considered by the legislature  have you answered justice types this question i have your time's expired thank you thank you good morning my name is frank salami from okinawa annoy that young man that council table behind me to my right is my son nicholas salami he's from orland park illinois and it's our privilege today to represent sergeant don no way the issue before the court as nearly stated and the contention that we have with respect to that issue is that where is here an otherwise eligible employee who was injured and never returns to his job is intitled to benefits accruing from the date of that injury thereafter or whether or not he's only entitle to benefits from the date of an adjudication we believe that the legislature could not have intended that it was on the date of adjudication that he intended that he be allowed benefits because that turns out to be act requires certification by three doctors that the officer cannot perform his duties getting three doctors together takes time and could cause a continuance but again could lose benefits under the act what if somebody after that point so are there are two sides to the arbitrary cooling the legislature enacted this act the public safety employees benefit act to relieve injured employees of a financial burden municipalities and i hesitate to answer questions about other cases i wasn't hired to handle other cases those cases can be decided by this court on another day and prudence and a conservative view would  itate that perhaps the way it be handled when those cases come before this court then the court make they have to terminations but as to my client yes to sergeant no way as to somebody who there is no payment the state of illinois or any municipality pay may appreciate it mr zolli but you know when you start to realize that when you sit here that your pronouncements affect more than just this case in this isn't a rule twenty three if we say that it's from the date of injury it's from the anyway if i guess it leaves you might as well take it it leaves other courts to determine when their injury occurred but isn't that somewhat problematic i think there are two reasons here primarily why the date of injury means the date of the date of the injury in august twenty one two thousand and five if i was pressed for a definition of what the data been jury should be what catastrophic injury would be i would say that it would be the data plan which he can no longer perform his services as a police officer and there's a reasonable likelihood that he will never be able to return to those things those are the types of considerations that would trigger his attempt to obtain a pension they all timidly are the defining evidence of why whether or not he receives that pension because contrary to what he had to give the impression here is that he can get a pension and if his condition  mproves that he could be subject to you know that pension being taken away so really the triggering date is the date upon which he can no longer perform his work and there's no question here but that he suffered a tibial plateau fracture which attendant to that is going to be atrophy to his wife or some muscles detective no way wrestled in the dirt with a resistant arrestee he never returned to his job and if it if we had to wait for the adjudication to finalize and this particular good occasion was appealed he still would not be  under the municipality's interpretation he still wouldn't be receiving benefits and that's not what the legislature intended they intended to benefit people who are dodging bullets from gangbangers of pursuing fleeing following wrestling in the dirt with the rest t's that's what the intention was not to do not actual nature of those he you don't dispute that he was on full pay until there was a declaration of permanent disability right he was he received one year of benefits an entirely different statute with an entirely different purpose after that he received and i represented him in his worker's compensation case two thirds of his average weekly wage backs it so he had to pay his own insurance premiums after the first year during the first year his premiums were deducted even though the public safety employees benefit x puts the burden upon the employer to pay the entire premium close  and what justice hoffman's justice hopkins analysis is perfect it's perfect and it was not objected to by any other men a member of his panel and the analysis was carefully tailored to the fact that the pension boards i'm doing is tantamount to a finding that he was that he suffered a catastrophic injury from day one that the reason why you have that retroactive clause to temper six is because he can't get pension benefits during the year he gets pita people specifically has an offset for pension benefits and for a short period of time after their as explained by justice hoffman in the decision and in the pension decision itself there's another week or so in there where he's not entitle to pension benefits that technically is a finding that he was entitled to pension benefits from day one and the only reason he doesn't get pension benefits from day one is because there are credits as counsel indicated but as far as a factual finding it's day one the injury they won the divider you know five he suffered a serious career ending injury on that date he never returned to full duty after that date he could reasonably anticipate that from the get go the fact that he hoped that perhaps he might be able to bring this proper some muscles back is not really relevant to our analysis here now there are cases and points out some cases i mean i suppose that if a guy works for six months or a year after after the occurrence you know that perhaps there is a question at that stage of the game as to whether or not his triggering event is a later point in time that's why the you know when i'm pressed and again i don't have this case and you don't have a case you don't think through things the same way but if pressed i think the answer would be the date upon which he is unable to work and there's a reasonable possibility or a reasonable likelihood however he would praise it that he's never going to return to the difference between the remuneration he was receiving when he was in full salary and what he gets his pension every roughly contract of full employment than he is under his parents are very you know there is a contractual argument to that under full employment twenty percent is paid by the employee you know when you say that because of the financial hardship i think is the way you put it before i mean he's he's under a more of a financial hardship once he's taking his pension right than when he was wonderful even when he's getting his t t i mean here's a situation where he received two thirds of his average weekly wage every weekly wage by the way is predicated on his earnings during the one year period prior to the occurrence not his earnings on the date of the occurrence so he's suffering kind of a retroactive pay cut to begin with and he's only receiving two thirds of that retroactive pay cut and then he's paying after the first year his his twenty percent of his well that the tax considerations are a nother matter it is true that the t t t is not a taxable taxable of that so even though he gets two thirds of his average weekly wage in terms of the tax purposes but there are other there are many many considerations that would good in the this or if there are space law that says it then certain instances i think silence of the state you could render it invigorates i don't think that's the case here i think that the language the council points to in his brief and argues to the court is language that was general it was from the general synopsis of the bill the idea of talking about an isolated incident of using the words going forward or continued hereafter could just sleep just as easily be interpreted to mean going forward from the date of the injury as from the date of the adjudication the date of the adjudication is mentioned nowhere and really makes very little sense when you think about it there are parties under the yakked for example a county sheriff who wouldn't have a pension board hearing another another is the idea of tying it to the decision date of the pension board hearing clearly can't be the intent because the act on its piece includes parties that don't necessarily appear in front of a buyer you know that under article three of the pension law so it's doubtful that there that there was any intent to tie it into the litigation date and again the litigation date that could last  of the arguments about contract especially the constitutional arguments you know if you're going to attack a statute and attempt to show that it's unconstitutional you know the burden is on you it's a heavy burden there's no showing here that this contract preexisted the enactment and i think it be safer to make the other assumption so the idea that the contract clause is implicated is not accurate and again although the municipalities have concerns a lot of the concerns in their brief went to the whole of the act not to when the benefits would be payable that's matter for the legislature and the legislature has made its decision and i think it's a wise decision yes you are speaking of the legislature's decision in terms of the language of the statute could you address because justice hoffman was i don't know p articulated but he was correct in that the the benefits that are listed in one b are up a certain nature there are benefits that are meant compensate for wage laws and when you have a b ok which is the exceptions to pita pay the listed the list there ok there is a list in my correct i mean maybe i'm thinking of the other but my recollection is that there is a listing of loss benefit if you look at the exceptions under perceived there are exceptions that go to actual insurance and that's why peta benefits is not listed there so there's a disabled in the line of duty so my question is doesn't the word continuation imply that coverage that it's dealing with coverage that would otherwise cease you know by death by permanent disability catastrophic injury the the real crux you know it's generally a common law you're entitle for to benefits from the data cause of action in cruise through the date of trial not at the date of trial i mean if you're off  work because of an injury and your you missed two years of work it isn't likely get your your wage loss from the date of trial onwards no it reaches back to the date the cause of action of crude and the question here is one did sergeant  no no and the reason it's not in duration in the common law is because that is the common law rule that is the common law rule and end of my assumption is that where the statute is silent the intent is that the common law again you don't think the continuation implies coverage from the day to death or permanent disability declaration permanent disability if indeed at the time of the catastrophic injury peter benefits or not there is cover i don't understand accrue the date that the board happens to convene or the doctors happen to get all of their documentation together or whether somebody takes an appeal or not that's not my experience with how they other problems and it's doubtful that they handle this one and  there's anything else i would simply ask on behalf of the surgeon no act and his family that you weren't him the benefits that are due him for an injury that caused him to end his career on august twenty one two thousand and five i guess i do have one one question for the first year after the injury was he out of anything i know you're suing for thirty three thousand eighty three dollars and eighty eight cents the twenty percent paid i believe but what that was was he not being having at the ducting on the same basis that he had when he was working full time were suing for only eight thousand three hundred dollars and that the eight hundred three hundred eight thousand three hundred dollars represents three thousand dollars that they took from his salary when there was a statute that said they had to pay the entire premium itself is that what  no no they're separate they're separate statutes that's what justice haas often found i agree with them and i think that there's a clear effort in the statutes to distinguish between the two because the exceptions if you take a look at both the exceptions under the two actual see that one relates entirely to wages one relates entirely to insurance and that's in the twain shall not meet sort of so you're saying there be no rationale for this court then to make the perceive about it it's effective unable to work from the date of the injury the only reason you can get pension benefits better really was because peta excludes pension benefits pension benefits or wage related benefits they're based on his wage sixty five percent of his wage and that would be a double payment for him to get sixty five percent of his wage and his full wage thank you thank you coun thank you there are a few brief points just this comment in response to your question of course this statute is interrogation of common law employers are not at common law obligated to provide insurance to its employees much less health insurance to former employees so without any question the statute is interrogation of common law so when the court does its balancing if it's a close question we should win because we are all in agreement that there is nothing explicitly saying that in addition to making sure that for the rest of his life he has health insurance that we repay this obligation much of the discussion that's gone on in response to councils argument deals with is it up who gets the better deal the first year or is it paying income taxes that that worker's compensation what's the relationship with the pension co of course there is none because pension is wages only i think that the flex around a from what the legislature was trying to do with this law this was it was prompted by nine eleven it was designed to deal primarily as justice thomas indicated with continuation to make sure that our first responders who get wrecked serving  protecting us aren't without health insurance for the rest of their life once they're off the municipal payroll that's the purpose of the law and that's what representative ten house says if somebody is injured or killed in the line of duty we're going to continue to benefit and don't really even talk about cost in the debates senator donahue we're going to make sure that we continue it for these people so the focus of the law is not in parsing things out as between now the first year because peta says benefits are not really are not recoverable because you're on full pay and the relationship about paying taxes or not paying taxes under workers comp i think that's a fool's errand for the core purpose of interpret in this statute the goal was to make sure that police officers and firemen who are forced to retire still have health insurance and that the taxpayers whom they protected  absorb that cost that's the deal and there's nothing to indicate that the legislature even thought about parsing out these relationships between the date of the injury when pete expires when workers comp expires it is our fall back argument just the car but we hope we went on the main argument it's it really has nothing to do with any of that and when we interpret the statute that imposes you know it's an eight thousand dollars obligation on country club hills it's a five thousand on a loop the fields on word on word on word it's an it's an obligation on every municipality of the state if if there was an inten from the legislature to go backwards they could have easily set it and the difference between this period of time from the date of the injury when the pay when the pension board made its decision and the day after the pension board made its decision is that from the date of that injury until the date of that pension board decision the city of country club hills was obligated by its laws and by its collective bargaining agreements to provide health insurance to don no way the day after that pension board decision the city of country club hills but for this statute was no longer obligated to provide free health insurance to be sure your honor there's a provision that you cited that if the officer wants to pay under percent after any retirement he can do it but third pay health insurance i have occasion only started to run on the date the employment relationship ended i would respectfully submit to the court that given that that canons of statutory construction that this court has repeated i counted five times this year in and reported opinions i i didn't cite the maxim case but that's one of the cases in the last year that if it's a close call in light of the fact that this law imposes a new unheard of and substantial or in the words of the appellate court a very generous benefit to police employees that the obligation be clearly spelled out so that the cities and villages can understand first when the law is being proposed what work what's proposed to be getting into and secondly so that all of the cities and villages in the state can understand what their potential obligations are going to be when one of our police officers or fireman are hurt i thank you for your consideration thank you mr murphy thank you as well mr salami for your arguments today case number one eleven eight three eight down no act versus the city and country club hills taken under advisement agenda number twenty three thank you