Opinion ID: 221651
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The IOD Statute.

Text: The plaintiffs' principal argument hinges on state statutes, municipal ordinances, and the interplay among them. The touchstone of this argument is the injured-on-duty (IOD) statute, which reads in relevant part: Whenever ... any police officer [or] fire fighter ... of any city ... is wholly or partially incapacitated by reason of injuries received ... in the performance of his or her duties ..., the respective city... by which the police officer [or] fire fighter ... is employed, shall, during the period of the incapacity, pay the police officer [or] fire fighter ... the salary or wage and benefits to which the police officer [or] fire fighter ... would be entitled had he or she not been incapacitated, and shall pay the medical [expenses] for the necessary period.... In addition, the cities ... shall pay all similar expenses incurred by a member who has been placed on a disability pension and suffers a recurrence of the injury or illness that dictated his or her disability retirement. R.I. Gen. Laws § 45-19-1(a). The IOD statute comprises two sentences. The district court concluded that neither sentence was sufficient to carry the burden of the plaintiffs' statutory argument. The court reasoned that the first sentence (Sentence 1) did not apply because, as retirees, the plaintiffs were no longer employed by the City. Cahoon I, 2008 WL 64518, at -5. It concluded that application of the second sentence (Sentence 2) was sidetracked by the combined effect of R.I. Gen. Laws § 43-3-26 and Warwick's municipal ordinances. Id. at -8. Consequently, the court held that the plaintiffs were not, as a statutory matter, entitled to full reimbursement of medical expenses. Id. at . The plaintiffs argue that the district court erred; that Sentence 1 entitles them, even after their retirement, to full reimbursement of medical expenses; and that Sentence 2 independently produces the same result. We start with Sentence 1. The plaintiffs maintain that this sentence confers benefits not only during the course of employment but also during retirement. In their view, the language of Sentence 1 is ambiguous, and the district court's interpretation fails to effectuate the intent of the state legislature (the Rhode Island General Assembly). We find this argument unpersuasive. The language of section 45-19-1(a) is clear as a bell. The section creates two tiers of benefits: the first, codified in Sentence 1, applies to persons who are still employed but temporarily disabled; the second, codified in Sentence 2, applies to persons who are retired due to a disability. The instruction in Sentence 1 to pay during the period of the incapacity the salary or wage to which the injured worker would be entitled had he or she not been incapacitated unequivocally denotes a person presently employed. After all, a retiree, by definition, no longer draws a salary or wages. Rather, as Sentence 2 makes manifest, a retiree is placed on a ... pension. Equally telling is the legislature's use of the present tense (is employed) in Sentence 1. This reading is reinforced by the statutory description of the benefit period as a period of the incapacity. That description plainly envisions that benefits under Sentence 1 are meant to apply for a limited time. By contrast, Sentence 2 speaks of retirement  an unlimited time. The contrary reading urged by the plaintiffs would obliterate this line of demarcation. If more were needed  and we do not think that it is  fully reimbursing the medical expenses of disabled retirees under Sentence 1 would make Sentence 2 entirely superfluous. Courts should avoid construing a statute in a way that will divest any of its component parts of meaning. See, e.g., State v. Clark, 974 A.2d 558, 572 (R.I.2009); Brennan v. Kirby, 529 A.2d 633, 637 (R.I.1987). There is every reason to honor that precept here. Our reading of section 45-19-1(a) is wholly consistent with the case law. The state's highest court has determined that the language of the IOD statute is clear and unambiguous. See Brissette v. Potter, 560 A.2d 324, 325 (R.I.1989); Aiudi v. Pepin, 417 A.2d 320, 321 (R.I.1980). In addition, our parsing of the statute's two sentences conforms with that court's precedents. See, e.g., Webster, 774 A.2d at 80 (concluding that the benefits contemplated by Sentence 1 apply to a firefighter or police officer only while he or she remains a member of the department  (emphasis in original)); Brissette, 560 A.2d at 326 (stating that the first portion of the statute ... relates specifically to salary while the second clause relates to medical expenses for a member who has been placed on a disability pension). The recent case of Hagenberg v. Avedisian, 879 A.2d 436 (R.I.2005) mirrors the circumstances with which we are confronted. There, a retired Warwick police officer sought full reimbursement of medical expenses under the IOD statute. Id. at 438-39. The court held that Sentence 1 did not compel such reimbursement for an officer who had retired on a disability pension. Id. at 441-42 (explaining that [t]he IOD statute never was intended to supplement a retired officer's retirement benefits). As the court had explained in an earlier case, [u]pon acceptance of disability pension benefits, a plaintiff may not... seek additional benefits pursuant to § 45-19-1. Elliott v. Town of Warren, 818 A.2d 652, 655 (R.I.2003) (per curiam). Here, the plaintiffs availed themselves of the City's retirement benefits regime and they cannot now resort to the prophylaxis of section 45-19-1. In an effort to lessen the impact of these precedents, the plaintiffs insist that the General Assembly, by enacting section 45-19-1, intended to give disabled firefighters and police officers greater benefits than those available under traditional workers' compensation laws. This insistence puts the matter in a false light. It was only through Sentence 1, which ensures the payment of full salary and medical benefits during the period of temporary incapacity, that the General Assembly intended to exceed the generosity of the workers' compensation laws. See Labbadia v. State, 513 A.2d 18, 21 (R.I.1986) (describing the advantages of the IOD statute vis-à-vis the workers' compensation laws). Nothing in the text of section 45-19-1 suggests that the legislature's purpose was to give injured firefighters and police officers better retirement benefits. See Hagenberg, 879 A.2d at 441. This brings us to Sentence 2, which states that the City shall pay all similar expenses incurred by a member who has been placed on a disability pension. The plaintiffs' position is that this language cinches their entitlement to full reimbursement of medical expenses post-retirement. The language of Sentence 2, if read in a vacuum, gives this position a certain superficial allure. But a court cannot  and must not  read a statute in a vacuum, and Sentence 2 runs headlong into R.I. Gen. Laws § 43-3-26, which directs that, in cases of irreconcilable conflict between two legislative provisions, one general and the other specific, the latter shall prevail and shall be construed as an exception to the general provision. The specific provision applicable here is R.I. Gen. Laws § 45-19-19, which authorizes municipalities to provide, by ordinance or through collective bargaining, for the retirement of the personnel of their police and fire departments who have been on leave of absence from their employment due to ... injuries sustained in the performance of their duties. Because Warwick provides retirement medical benefits to its disabled firefighters and police officers through a combination of city ordinances and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), [4] the court below held that this specific arrangement took precedence over the more general provision contained in Sentence 2 and, therefore, that the plaintiffs were not entitled to full medical benefits under section 45-19-1(a). Cahoon I, 2008 WL 64518, at . This holding is manifestly correct. We need not tarry. Sentence 2 is a general provision. It conflicts with the combination of R.I. Gen. Laws § 45-19-19 and the City's actions in pursuance thereof. For present purposes, this conflict renders Sentence 2 inapposite. See St. Germain v. City of Pawtucket, 119 R.I. 638, 382 A.2d 180, 181 (1978) (per curiam) (concluding that city's retirement benefits law for injured firefighters was specific compared to section 45-19-1, where former was applicable only to the city, while latter was a general statute which applies to all cities and towns). The plaintiffs proclaim that there is no conflict between section 45-19-1 and the City's retirement scheme. But the conflict is obvious. Warwick's ordinances provide disabled retirees with health insurance, see Warwick, R.I., Code of Ordinances §§ 20-60(a), 52-6(a), and this insurance covers some (but not all) medical expenses, leaving the retirees responsible for the balance. Furthermore, the insurance coverage attaches only until Medicare can be expected to bear the load. Id. §§ 20-60(c), 52-6(b). This scheme directly and ineluctably conflicts with the second sentence of section 45-19-1(a), which requires the full payment of any medical expenses  and does so without any Medicare hand-off. See Morry v. City of Warwick, 742 A.2d 1205, 1207 (R.I.2000) (per curiam). The significance of this conflict is made clear by the decision in St. Germain, which explains that the General Assembly designed section 45-19-1 to protect only those firefighters and police officers who are employed by cities ... that do not have their own pension plans. 382 A.2d at 181. The statute in no way repeals or supersedes the various special acts that authorize municipalities to establish their own pension and retirement benefit plans. Id.; see Trembley v. City of Central Falls, 480 A.2d 1359, 1362 (R.I.1984). Thus, where a pension system that includes medical benefits is in effect, § 45-19-1 may not serve as a default source of benefits. Elliott, 818 A.2d at 655; see Hagenberg, 879 A.2d at 442 (An injured officer employed by a municipality that has its own retirement system is restricted to the benefits provided by the particular statutory scheme.). The plaintiffs mount two additional counter-arguments. First, they contend that the grant of health insurance coverage to retired firefighters and police officers is effectuated not by section 45-19-19, but by section 45-2-11, which gives municipalities authority to provide healthcare coverage for all employees. This latter statute, they say, is another general statute, thus eliminating the perceived conflict. This contention is unavailing. The ordinances that grant the City authority to provide health insurance coverage for its retired public safety personnel enumerate not only section 45-2-11, but also every other power thereunto enabling. Warwick, R.I., Code of Ordinances § 20-60(a); see id. § 52-6(a). This language plainly encompasses section 45-19-19, which addresses the narrower subset of retired firefighters and police officers. In all events, whether or not a conflict exists between sections 45-19-1 and 45-2-11, there is an undeniable conflict between both of those general provisions and the specific provision of section 45-19-19. So long as that is true, section 45-2-11 cannot come to the plaintiffs' rescue. Alternatively, the plaintiffs labor to refute the conclusion that section 45-19-1 should not be read to permit, in effect, a bifurcation of benefits (some governed by state statutes and others governed by municipal ordinances). See Cahoon I, 2008 WL 64518, at . But the state supreme court's decision in Elliott stands squarely in their path. See Elliott, 818 A.2d at 654 (rejecting any entitlement to a bifurcation of pension and medical benefits when ... a disability pension system is in place). While the plaintiffs strive to distinguish Elliott on the ground that the claimant in that case was seeking both salary and medical expense reimbursements, id. at 653, there is no reason to believe that the General Assembly intended a claim for one kind of retirement benefits under section 45-19-1 to be treated differently from a claim for some other kind of retirement benefits. Indeed, the case law suggests the opposite conclusion. See Hagenberg, 879 A.2d at 441-42; see also Lanni v. Ferrante, 688 A.2d 865, 866 (R.I.1997) (mem.) (concluding that plaintiff, having voluntarily elected to recover his disability pension benefits from [the municipal pension] system ... may not ... seek benefits pursuant to § 45-19-1); cf. United States v. O'Neil, 11 F.3d 292, 296 (1st Cir.1993) (noting venerable principle that grant of a greater power includes grant of a lesser power). The short of it is that Sentence 2 functions as a gap-filling mechanism, assuring injured retirees that municipalities will not leave them completely high and dry with regard to medical expenses. [5] If, however, a municipality provides medical coverage for retirees, there is no gap to fill and, thus, no room for section 45-19-1 to furnish default benefits. See Hagenberg, 879 A.2d at 442. That the benefit separately provided is less than one hundred percent of medical expenses does not alter this reality. See, e.g., Elliott, 818 A.2d at 655. Here, the City has created a retirement system that covers its public safety retirees and affords them medical benefits. It is this system, not Sentence 2, that dictates the medical benefits available to the plaintiffs. In a last-ditch effort to carry the day, the plaintiffs assert that the City's retirement plan incorporates the benefits due to retirees under section 45-19-1. This assertion lacks force. To be sure, some municipalities maintain retirement systems which, either through legislative acts or CBAs, incorporate the provisions of the IOD statute and provide that retirement benefits for disabled public safety officers should be distributed accordingly. See, e.g., Brissette, 560 A.2d at 325. Warwick, however, is not among that number. Nothing in the City's ordinances or CBAs indicates an intent to integrate the terms of section 45-19-1 into the City's retirement system. There would be no justification in straining to reach such a result by judicial fiat. Hagenberg confirms this understanding. The court there explicitly stated that an officer who retires with a disability pension... forfeits the benefits of § 45-19-1, unless the municipality has no disability pension system. 879 A.2d at 442. The court's statement that the component of the City's retirement system that paid medical benefits was in accordance with the IOD statute, id. at 443, signifies only that the City maintained a disability retirement system that provided medical benefits sufficient to obviate any need to resort to default benefits under section 45-19-1. Thus, we conclude that the plaintiffs' claims for full reimbursement of medical expenses by operation of the IOD statute, whether seen in terms of Sentence 1 or Sentence 2, are without merit.