Opinion ID: 2307984
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Daniels's Retirement

Text: In the administrative proceeding before Judge Lim, Daniels had the burden of proving that he retired involuntarily, because a retirement request initiated by an employee is presumed to be a voluntary act. [6] The fact that an employee is faced with an inherently unpleasant situation or that his choice is limited to two unpleasant alternatives is not enough by itself to render the employee's choice involuntary. [7] The test, an objective one, [8] is whether, considering all the circumstances, the employee was prevented from exercising a reasonably free and informed choice. [9] As a general principle in this context, an employee's decision to retire or resign is said to be voluntary if the employee is free to choose, understands the transaction, is given a reasonable time to make his choice, and is permitted to set the effective date. [10] With meaningful freedom of choice as the touchstone, courts have recognized that an employee's retirement or resignation may be involuntary if it is induced by the employer's application of duress or coercion, [11] time pressure, [12] or the misrepresentation or withholding of material information. [13] The evidence presented to the OEA and credited by Judge Lim showed that Daniels's retirement came about as follows. On the afternoon of Friday, February 13, 1998, his day off, Daniels was summoned from home for an unscheduled meeting at 2:45 p.m. with the Assistant Chief of Police, Robert C. White. [14] White informed Daniels that Interim Chief of Police Proctor had decided to replace him as Sixth District Commander, effective immediately. Further, White stated, Daniels had until 4:00 p.m. that day to decide whether to retire from the police force, accept a demotion to an unspecified position, or else be fired. [15] White denied Daniels's request for more time to make his decision, and he refused to tell Daniels how his pay and benefits would be affected if he accepted a demotion instead of leaving the force. Daniels, whose tenure as commander was unblemished, left the brief meeting with White in a state of shock and humiliation. As the 4:00 p.m. deadline loomed, Daniels attempted to ascertain from the MPD payroll office whether his demotion would entail a reduction of his salary, but the office was closed for the day. At 4:00 p.m., Daniels telephoned White and accepted the demotion. White said Daniels would be moved to a night supervisor's position as an inspector, and that he would be given further details on Tuesday, February 17, after the President's Day weekend. [16] Over the next several hours, Daniels tried to collect his thoughts. He learned that his replacement as Sixth District commander had been announced to the public late that afternoon. He worried about the unknown financial consequences of his demotion; in particular, whether it would entail a pay cut and jeopardize his pension. Daniels's fears regarding the status of his pension were heightened when he learned how Stanley and Smith had been ousted and he spoke with Smith on Friday evening. Smith warned him that if he were to be fired, he would lose all of his pension rights. [17] Like his fellow commanders, Daniels had been told by Chief Proctor's predecessor, former Chief of Police Soulsby, that the Control Board had given the Chief authority to fire them summarily and without cause. The interviews with Assistant Chief White appeared to confirm that assertion, which Daniels had no reason to doubt, but which MPD now concedes was erroneous. [18] On Saturday morning, after an anxious night, Daniels tried to contact Chief Proctor to get more information about his situation. He could not reach her. Feeling that he needed to secure his pension and benefits before it was too late, Daniels then telephoned White and said he would retire. Although the 4:00 p.m. Friday deadline had passed, White accepted Daniels's decision. Saturday afternoon, Daniels wrote up his retirement application, in which he complained how the time constraint did not give me enough time to make an intelligent decision because I had not been considering retiring. [19] MPD nonetheless approved Daniels's retirement application expeditiously, waiving the usual sixty days' notice requirement for such requests. On March 5, 1998, not three weeks after his interview with White, Daniels wrote Chief Proctor a letter seeking to rescind his precipitous decision to retire. [20] She denied his plea. MPD argues, and the administrative judge agreed, that Daniels's retirement was not coerced, but, rather, was voluntary as a matter of law, because he simply wanted to avoid a duty reassignment that the Chief of Police had the authority to make. [21] We believe that this argument fails to give due weight to other crucial elements of the legal equation. As a general matter, it is true, the doctrine of coercive involuntariness . . . does not apply to a case in which an employee decides to resign or retire because he does not want to accept a new assignment, a transfer, or other measures that the agency is authorized to adopt, even if those measures make continuation in the job so unpleasant for the employee that he feels that he has no realistic option but to leave. [22] But Daniels met his burden of showing that his decision to retire was induced by other factors that, in combination, substantially undermined his freedom of choicenamely, the extremely short time frame in which he was forced to elect between retirement and demotion (or, it appeared, termination); his inability to obtain information from MPD about the financial consequences of that election; and the daunting misrepresentation that the Chief of Police could fire him summarily at any time without cause or due process. [23] We grant that time pressure or deficient information may be present to a greater or lesser degree in many unquestionably voluntary retirement and resignation decisions. Nevertheless, in this case those handicaps were severe ones. The evidence is undisputed that MPD pressed Daniels to make a life-changing decision on the spur of the moment. The evidence also is undisputed that the urgency Daniels felt was exacerbated by his inability, in the time permitted him, to make an informed choicean inability for which MPD was wholly responsible. A decision made `with blinders on,' based on misinformation or a lack of information, cannot be binding as a matter of fundamental fairness and due process. [24] There is no evidence that any other circumstance relieved or mitigated the duress under which Daniels was placed. In short, MPD compelled Daniels to decide his fate in haste and ignorance. While the law permits an agency to put its employee to a hard choice between unpleasant alternatives, the law also requires that the choice be understood by the employee and . . . be freely made. [25] Considering the time pressure and the informational disability together, we cannot find sufficient evidence in the record to support the administrative judge's determination that Daniels retired voluntarily. On the contrary, he indisputably made his decision under duress, and we hold that it was involuntary as a matter of law.