Opinion ID: 1264587
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Trembush's Claim of Estoppel

Text: Even if the statutory law is contrary to his contentions herein, appellee Trembush claims that the Board should be estopped from applying any different formula to his retirement calculations than if he were a member of the teachers' retirement system. He claims that his decision to retire at the time he did was based, at least in part, on his belief that he would be treated no differently as a member of PERS than if he were a member of the teacher's retirement system. He bases his contention upon his claim that a staff person of PERS represented to him at the time he was considering transferring his retirement account from the teacher's retirement system to PERS in 1993 that there would be no difference between the two systems that would operate to his detriment. The Hearing Officer below made a finding that there was no evidence of detrimental reliance on the part of Trembush, a finding which is to be accorded deference unless we believe that finding to be clearly wrong. See Syl. Pt. 1, Muscatell v. Cline, 196 W.Va. 588, 474 S.E.2d 518 (1996). Without making any judgment here as to whether Trembush's unused, accrued vacation lump sum payment would or would not have been included in his retirement calculation had he retired from the teacher's retirement system instead of PERS, the claimed representation by a staff person at PERS, if made, was one of law rather than of fact and could not have been predicated or relied upon in 1993 for the year 2001, the year Trembush retired. See Ara v. Erie Ins. Co., 182 W.Va. 266, 270, 387 S.E.2d 320, 324 (1989) (The doctrine of estoppel applies when a party is induced to act or to refrain from acting to her detriment because of her reasonable reliance on another party's misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact.) Moreover, we do not find that the Hearing Officer's determination that there was no detrimental reliance on the part of Trembush to be clearly wrong. We, therefore, hold that appellees, Carter, who retired on January 11, 2000, and Trembush, who retired on August 1, 2001, as employees of the WVSSAC, were not legally entitled to have the payments made to them by their employer for unused, accrued vacation days included in their final average salary for purposes of calculating their retirement benefits as retiring members of PERS.