to provide a very special benefit lifetime health insurance for a first responder and his or her spouse for their lives in certain circumstances this is something that i think everybody agrees is appropriate in certain circumstances but the legislature did not intend that this was a way to provide an extra benefit to firemen and police in all cases the is very narrowly drawn it requires basically that there be a catastrophic injury which this court as defined and redefined again very recently in village purposes of this argument he was clearly on the disability to stop before this court can actually decide whether to make a decision in the case it must it must be determined whether vaughn actually is receiving a line pension board that he is not able to or that he will be able to return to work and therefore his pension would stop and he is receiving full pension benefits today the facts in this case they are that mr vine who is a pro he was on duty by his car he was at the mall a mall parking lot in the morning which was the end of issue he got out of the car to give directions to a person while he was out of the car he did have a personal radio but he had that turned off while he was out of the the dispatcher call him and he returned to the car because of its proximity sat leaned in to get the microphone and hit his head on the top of the car that's the injury that we're talking about here and under the requires catastrophic but under heat requires were specific rounds one of or knows floor on if he is injured by a perpetrator in other words a criminal him classic example happened last week unfortunately i think of philadelphia officer sitting in a police car and shot i think sixteen times that clearly would qualify the second one is that he is in hot pursu he's chasing somebody and he enters into self trying to catch that person to get him off the streets the third of those he's involved in an investigation and that requires the officer to go to places that you and i probably don't want to go and probably look like to go but officers after go because of the investigation those are all clear none of those apply in this case the fluke one is that it is an action where the officer reasonably believes that that they respond to an emergency and that until that officer knows that it is not an emergency he has to respond as the fifth district said in  dispatcher call is something that has on occasion alluded someone to an emergency death where there is the potential for that therefore it's number one for scene but it could lead to an emergency saying the black letter law concerning permanent injunctions but then they never again mention permanent injunctions or analyzed whether the plaintiff was entitle to a permanent injunction and they held that the plaintiff had suffered best i can tell had suffered a catastrophic injury and that the injury occurred as a result of one of the four new new i know you can test this one of the four numerated circumstances in section ten b and the  stated quote we conclude these facts establish that the plaintiff's injury was incurred as a result of his response to what he reasonable and reasonably believed was an emergency where you've just been talking about us and then they reversed the circuit court remanded for further proceedings and they provided no further direction to the circuit court so i guess my question is i don't know that it's going to matter in the context of what we're looking at and discussing today assume that was going to be done although they had no discussion of permanent injunctions your honor i had assumed that's probably correct obviously i felt that the other one who was clearly wrong and needed to be a print injunction how the officer gets the benefit under of the public service employee benefits act as there's two or three ways that have been allowed the statute doesn't call for anything specific that happened here trial court actually granted a temporary injunction and doing determination and required us to provide health insurance while the court considered this and then ultimately said he is not does not need to be provided and even if it even if health insurance was required to be provided if it's not if the plaintiff is able to return to work you don't feel that the  f the health insurance thing could be cut at that point as it is a your alternative argument list it is determined that he can return to work done with adequate notice so it is binding on mr vaugh and the pension board which is a different entity than the city at that point we were maintaining that he fails to meet the requirements to set out in section eight of the act which is the catastrophic injury and you defined the sprinkler as defined at a stroppy injury as a permanent injury for which a line of duty pension is authorized if he has not i would submit that we can terminate but that's actually not before this court because by the time it got to the appellate court in this case he had already also looking girls the determination that he was not injured or that he couldn't physically return to work and the first district sat he was not adequately give the notice of the hearing to end the pension and therefore the pension is in fact still in effect and as was asked it is still being paid today it's being little bit and again he's going before doctors and there will be a no we're hearing by the pension board and the city has nothing to do with that so i met second argument there would have to be a finding that there he was no longer entitle to a line of duty disability pension that's correct and in fact a perk we would maintain that he is not entitled to insurance in it's being litigated a separate action that's correct and that's our problem with his determination it doesn't accept any of your reply miss for that an emergency who is it doesn't accept any of your requirements for or that there be property or life at risk and it doesn't require any problem with what is for seen this is not an emergency the fact that the dispatcher could have been calling and said there's a fire or there's a robbery in progress and you need to proceed he didn't know that in fact it didn't occur but it was not an emergency call but the south of the fifth district said doesn't matter they have created a new grounds and that is a grounds that the city is a car a state of illinois should not be required to live what this is a very expensive issue i mean we all know that price of health insurance has skyrocketed in the last few years and we're talking about a lifetime insurance or both a officer and their spouse that's a sizable amount of money we believe that should be allowed if there is truly a catastrophic injury and if there truly was a situation where that officer should have been out there putting his or her life at risk because of their duty but who says you hit your head on the top of the car which we all may have done at one time that's not what we're talking about now if somebody was shooting at him and he was ducking not to be shot we wouldn't be here i would not argue that i would accept that that's an emergency somebody shooting in an office but when all he is doing is responding to a call the dispatcher says well mr long we want to talk to him he is picking up the mike to respond that's all that that is not an emergency and if we allow that we just as i said a limit over the requirement for emergency from this and then any officer who assume a two flow police station and the sergeants on the ground for the officers on the second somebody says a sergeant wants to see downstairs he's walking down the steps and he trips and falls and he's permanently injured under the fifth district determination the city would that have to pay he and his spouse or she and her spouse lifetime health insurance that's not what this is all about and that's not what the legislature said it's not clear language of the statute and it cannot stand the fifth district opinion could not should not stan that it can never be terminated because the statute says it can be terminated if it's fraud in the inception affectively we maintain it can be terminated for a lot of reasons and here clearly if the court determines and the court is the only one who can i don't think the fact that the statute doesn't say we are going to list every way you can terminate something and the second one is that the city may be a stop because we pay benefits at one time wel maritz you're going to answer the same question is it your understanding that the plaintiffs is arguing that even if he did not qualify for benefits under ten b this is stop war you meant would still apply as  little bit maybe he was injured june twenty seventh twenty eighth two thousand and five he was the night yes disability pension on march twenty fourth two thousand and nine it was sent to the ever going to have a hearing on this real life and the benefits were commentated on july twenty sixth two thousand and twelve by the board saying that he was now capable of going back to work the to the act regarding pensions and just make it so i can understand this over here this statute does not provide for temporary disability vs permanent disability just calls it at that same time this recount the city card business and city carbondale terminated his health insurance that's when we filed the petition for an injunction to stop the city from terminating its health problem judge and in that particular case in a temporary injunction saying payment pending the outcome of the appeal on whether or not his disability should have been terminate those health benefits that's when this particular appeal went to the fifth district in the meantime after we filed the appeal to the fifth district on this issue of the health insurance the fifth district came back and said do do due to a violation of mr vaughan's due process rights were reinstating his fiction fans they never reached the issue of whether or not he was injured or whether he could go back to work they just said he had no health care benefits pursuant to the act to this act and you know one of the things that that the court should know is that when the city health care benefits based on the fact that he was catastrophic we disabled and as in that was determined by the board of a condo playstation is that fact enough counsel to fact they weren't paying it until i may demand that they pay it under that act and then they immediately started it isn't it is it is my position that unless there  that any any he retains his health care benefits the only reduction can't be terminated but they can be reduced and forgive me but i'd i'm and i cannot remember the name of the case this court rule or the fifty fifth district i believe ruled that a pensioner's benefits could be reduced if he went on medicare and they and they ordered those pensions that has health insurance reduced because he went on medicare and that medicare supplement or replace the health care insurance because the city provided him health insurance through their health insurance carrier he terminated his personal health insurance and i think that as i realized good detriment to his detriment on what the city did reason to to know those particular issues are but it's my understanding that he would be entitled to health insurance but he's still going to have a period of time between when the city terminating and what he's able to pick right to continue to health care benefits i believe he does even if he says it's been determined physically he's no longer disabled i believe he does and can explain that to me i believe that there is no no there is nothing in the statu disabled that's in the pension itself could stop under the statute and he wouldn't be getting any kind of pay out of the pension but you're saying even if that were to be at the current that he still has a lifetime right to health care insurance even though three of us his life is not disabled i believe that's correct based on what the statute itself says it is there's nothing in the statute that says it can be terminated it says it can be reduced but terminate and that's my and that's my position now that may be ludicrous but i think that that's up to the legislature to correct or not for this court and you know i've been of the opinion for a long time that commonsense die and and i and i and and i think that the law has a lot to do with that because of the manner in which this way to slater writes their statutes and the way the courts interpret those stations rightfully or wrongfully so i think i think that i think common sense says what what you're saying is that he loses his pension he's not he's not permanently disabled anymore he should lose these health care benefits but that's not what the statute says the statute only says that it can be reduced or it can be terminated if mr von has committed a fraud upon the city by making originally argument about the emergency nature i knew your interpretation could there ever be a situation which the officer sustains injury responding to the speech call that wouldn't be covered absolutely absolutely so it doesn't make any difference what the nature of the dispatch call is or is it the fact that each time he gets a call he may be a reasonably should believe it's an emergency it depends in my  on what the circumstances are i think that i think all of these cases are very very fact specific i think if if if after vonn had been sitting in his squad car and he got the call me picked the radio up and said something and found out that he was going to have to go talk to somebody about a walk god a dog barking loudly at the house he put it back down to got out of his car to finish his conversation with the lady he was talking to given directions then went back and hit his head on his car i don't think this would apply at all because he already knew that it wasn't an emergency call so if he says it is the appellate courts conclusion that the dis matters i don't think you even get to the issue as to whether the call mr von was responding to was or was not an emergency because he was injured before we moved and in his in his position is that when i get what caused his disability he did not know at the time whether the call was or was not an emergency at the time he was injured you know but he was responding as if it was but i thought you said the surrounding circumstances make a difference i think they did and the surrounding circumstances in this case is that mr von was out of his squad he gets a call from dispatch we call him twice or three times he thought that something was going on so he went ran we scored car when he entered to get to the to the radio hit he said and injured himself after that he got situated in the car responded to the dispatcher and found out what he's call i don't know what it was but i know it was an emergency but he didn't know that and i think what the fifth district is saying is that until an officer knows whether he is responding to an emergency or a non emergency he should treat that call as if it were an emergency and you know i can tell you i was a policeman for eleven years and that's the way we responded to calls and i was a policeman in carbon you respond to calls as if it's an emergency and to you know different it's just like any call then would qualify right unless an officer said the phone rang him or that the dispatch came and i just felt in my being that it was going to be a non  emergency mean all the officer would have to say every single call subjectively are saying any time there is a call he treats as it is an emergency that's never lets me get a kid out of a trailer whether is there's a burglar or burglary in the local liquid liquor store i think that's true i think i think an officer should treat every call i think officers do treat every single radio call ask if it were an urgency until they fanchon and again it's the circumstances go back to common sense or go if you were in when we look at the requirements of turn the officers response to what is reasonably believed to be an emergency and why would that not just simply read the officers response to any c i don't know why but i think a i think a police officer response to every and this response of the radio as if it were an emergency best whether he's sitting in the squad or reaches out and gets the microphone or whether he uses his personal personal handheld radio and by the way i just i just want to address that so we never really assess the nature of the call like even you said this was a non emergency call that's what it ended up being but he did not know that  up and they say go get the cattle free ok that's one thing if he thinks about it and they say there's an alarm at the looker store and he takes off go to the liquor store and when he gets there it's a false alarm does that make a difference five seconds to know when you've got an emergency once you get to that radio and talk to the to the desert what what to the words the officers response to what is reasonably believed to be an emergency what's wouldn't what are the words reasonably believe me is that is is that an objective standard when you say he got a call on a cat was in a tree and we sit here and that simple and say he did not reasonably believe at to be an emergency he could get there in half hour the camp would still be there but under your analysis why would reasonable belief even enter into it i mean what you're saying that an officer in every situation with every call has reasonable belief that that's an emergency so one of those words mean he should have a reasonable belief that it's an emergency if he's properly trying that's why he's going to respond to those radio until he knows different it would obviously no matter what he does he knows that's not emergency before he ever touches that really so i mean again i think these are all histories th very briefly the last thing you were discussing is the true crux of why i think this had to come to this court and why this court must over with the  district has basically said that until they're all certain understands completely that it's not an emergency it is an emergency except if you look at their decision legislature could have witnessed something and just said every time an officer is injured he should get us and my community would have to live with that and would ask me for that but that's not appropriate that's not what the accept what the fifth district accepted then just throw more urgency out the three requirements that you said are defining emergency in this statute they violate each one of those each one of the three and if that's allowed to stand then that's what we're going to have to deal with which is i old fear wound's or that just now there was another issue the causality and whether th catastrophic injury the a section that really ills whether he is permanently disabled it does get confusing and i would clearly say that when he is determined or if he is determined and legally determined to be able to return to work that we should be able to terminate the health insurance when he talked about this in the nola case not there and we ask them to go in places where they put their own health and safety at risk and they certainly put their families or jeopardy and this is to try to protect that just as that officer in philadelphia who shot sixteen times society should benefit him and his family we have no well with that but also person slips on the steps walking then have to do this and clearly now we are in a situation where under federal law mr von can get health insurance there's no question about that he wasn't had no detrimental except he didn't pay a premium and he wanted a benefit for not having paid a premium if you look at a stall and detrimental reliance you've got to add something i relied on i the city says they're going to resolve it and i spend thousands of dollars buying a lot and buy a bunch of materials and then they say oh we didn't mean it that's promissory estoppel i relied to my detriment mr vaughan did rely on anything he just kept getting benefit and clearly a stop will should not stand against the city there is no fraud in the inception i would concede that and i think that one of the reasonable belief of an emergency is twofold one that they also actually believe there is an emergency going on this one officer is out there in a bunch of firecrackers going off and he thinks they're gun shots and he tries to dive under his carnage and self i wouldn't be here arguing that that's not an emergency but in this case bester bomb didn't think that do it then what he chose to do on we don't have any problem with that except there was no more merchants there was no thought there was an emergency there's an admission he didn't think there was an emergency and clearly we should not be required pay for health insurance for he and his spouse for the rest of their lives thank you thank you he's number one one nine one eight line jeffrey w von vs the city of carbondale will be taken under advisement