Court Opinion

ID: 9782429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:32:16.963906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:32.462369
License: Public Domain

BAXTER, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I agree with the majority opinion insofar as it rejects Mr. Nolan’s argument that he can claim disability retirement benefits on the sole basis that he has become physically or psychologically incapacitated to work as a police officer for the City of Anaheim. On the contrary, he must show that his job-related physical or psychological condition prevents him from performing the usual and customary duties of a police officer anywhere in the state. And once he does present such evidence, the city must have an opportunity to rebut it.
But that is the end of the matter. If Mr. Nolan has a general job-related incapacity for police officer duties, he is entitled to a pension. Otherwise, he is not. The majority opinion thus errs in its holding that Mr. Nolan may retire for disability, even if he has no general incapacity, unless the city can show “that similar positions with other California law enforcement agencies are available to him.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 344, fn. omitted, italics added.)
The majority’s effort not to penalize Mr. Nolan for his “whistleblowing” activities is understandable, but it is an example of good intentions gone awry. The statutory scheme specifies that an eligible local safety member may be retired for disability if “the member is incapacitated physically or mentally for the performance of his or her duties in the state service” (Gov. Code, § 21156, italics added)1 “as the result of an industrial disability” (§ 21151, subd. (a)). The statutes nowhere intimate that a disability pension is available to an officer who has a general physical and mental ability to perform, but simply cannot secure a position. Unemployability is not the same thing as incapacity. The disability retirement system is not an unemployment insurance system.
As sole support for the “available positions” theory it invents, the majority opinion cites section 20001. This statute declares that the purpose of the *346pension system for public employees is to “effect economy and efficiency in the public service by providing a means whereby employees who become superannuated or otherwise incapacitated may, without hardship or prejudice, be replaced by more capable employees . . . (Italics added.) The majority opinion posits that to deny Mr. Nolan a pension when no similar positions are available would cause him hardship and prejudice.
But the retirement scheme is intended to ease “hardship or prejudice” only for those eligible employees who are no longer productive because they have become either “superannuated,” or “incapacitated” by industrial injury (§ 20001, italics added; see also § 21151, subd. (a)), and “incapacitated” means physically or mentally unable to perform anywhere in the state, not just for a particular employer. Section 20001 affords no license to carve out a “hardship or prejudice” exception to the statutory requirement that a disability retiree be “incapacitated” by job-related injury.
The facts of Mr. Nolan’s case may be sympathetic, but the rule proposed by the majority opinion presumably would apply in less compelling circumstances. Law enforcement work is stressful by nature, and serious job-related conflicts may routinely arise. As the Court of Appeal noted, “[pjeace officers and firefighters sometimes put in for a disability retirement based on ‘mental incapacity’ [which] derives fundamentally from the fact that they aren’t getting along with their colleagues” and from “fear about the way fellow officers will behave toward them in the future.” The concern arises that an officer whose difficulties with coworkers have made it psychologically impossible to continue in that agency, but not elsewhere, could receive lifetime disability benefits simply on evidence that other agencies would not wish to hire him, or that the job market was full. (But cf. Haywood v. American River Fire Protection Dist. (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 1292, 1304-1307 [79 Cal.Rptr.2d 749] (Haywood) [disability retirement not intended for one simply unwilling to return to current agency because of personality conflicts after being terminated for nonmedical cause].)
Moreover, if entitlement to a disability pension depends on whether similar suitable employment is unavailable elsewhere, numerous complications of proof will be presented. If the issue is general unemployability, what evidence on that issue will suffice? If the issue is job availability, how broad an area must the search for other openings cover? At what moment, or over what period, must the unavailability exist? Such questions threaten to become the “tail that wags the dog” in proceedings to determine whether a locally, but not generally, incapacitated officer may retire for disability.
Of course, an eligible local safety member may do so if difficulties that arose with a particular employer have produced a general psychological *347incapacity to perform the usual and customary duties of a peace officer, regardless of location. The line between “unable” and merely “unwilling” can be fine. (See Haywood, supra, 67 Cal.App.4th 1292 [79 Cal.Rptr.2d 749].) Nonetheless, if Mr. Nolan’s Anaheim experience produced a genuine personal fear, so severe as to render him dysfunctional, that, wherever he went, his record would follow, and he would face unbearable ostracism, threats, and lack of backup at times of danger, I agree he may secure a disability pension.
Nothing in the Court of Appeal’s disposition prevents Mr. Nolan from presenting such evidence on remand. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

 All further unlabeled statutory references are to the Government Code.