Court Opinion

ID: 9636328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:24:25.099799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:44.315418
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Associate Judge,
with whom TERRY, Associate Judge, joins, dissenting:
This case concerns the criteria for disability retirement from the Metropolitan Police Department when the claimant is permanently, but only partially, disabled. I agree with my colleagues in the majority that a police officer is not “disabled,” within the meaning of D.C.Code § 4-607(2) (1981), unless “he is unable to perform work in any position at the same salary level as he previously earned.” Ante at 138 (citations omitted).1 An officer, therefore, will not be entitled to disability retirement merely by showing a physical inability to perform the job he or she held at the time of the injury (a job which typically would require fitness to perform all the taxing duties attributable to police work).
On the other hand, since no one disputes that petitioner has a permanent partial disability of five to fifteen percent of his body, and thus cannot perform his old job, we are squarely presented with the question whether there is a “useful and efficient” light-duty job, at the same salary, that petitioner is physically fit to perform. D.C. Code § 4-607(2) (1981); see note 1 supra. If there is not, he will be legally “disabled” and thus retirable as such. In short, the possibility of retirement for permanent partial disability is a function of two principal variables: (1) a permanent, partial physical impairment, and (2) the unavailability of a *140suitable light-duty alternative to one’s former job.
My colleagues sustain “the Board’s finding that petitioner could perform useful and efficient service for the Department,” ante at 138, by reference solely to the first variable. Although concededly there is only partial, not total, disability, and thus petitioner is not necessarily “disabled” under the statute, the majority upholds denial of retirement even though there is not a shred of record evidence that a “useful and efficient” light-duty job actually exists.2 My colleagues do not require such evidence, however, since petitioner — despite the fact that he is not privy to the inner workings of the police department — did not carry the burden of proving a negative: that no such job exists.
Contrary to the majority, I believe that once permanent partial disability is proved, it is up to the government to sustain the burden of demonstrating that there actually is a “useful and efficient” light-duty job that petitioner may be capable of performing; otherwise, petitioner should be entitled to disability retirement. Whitehurst v. Police and Firemen’s Retirement and Relief Board, 418 A.2d 1028, 1029 (D.C.1980) (Fer-ren, J., dissenting); Seabolt v. Police and Firemen’s Retirement and Relief Board, 413 A.2d 908, 913, 915 (D.C.1980) (Ferren, J., dissenting).3
By placing on petitioner “the burden of showing that there is no job available which he can perform,” ante at 139, my colleagues “say, in effect, that there is a presumption of available light-duty work which the claimant must rebut by a preponderance of the evidence .... ” Whitehurst, supra, 418 A.2d at 1029 (Ferren, J., dissenting); ante at 139 n. 3. As a consequence, this en banc decision stands for the proposition that all the government has to do, in order to deny disability retirement, is to produce credible medical testimony tending to show that petitioner is not totally disabled to perform some kind of useful (though undefined) work. Rzepecki v. Police and Firemen’s Retirement and Relief Board, 429 A.2d 1388, 1390 n. 1 (D.C.1981) (Ferren, J., concurring). Thus, the realities about what kinds of light-duty jobs are actually available may be altogether ignored, leaving it up to the petitioner (or the Metropolitan Police Department) to commence a second proceeding if, as it turns out, there is no “useful and efficient” light-duty service, at the previous salary level, that the petitioner is capable of performing. See ante at 139.
This approach not only is likely to waste administrative and judicial resources but also is an irrational allocation of the burdens of defining and verifying light-duty alternatives. Seabolt, supra, 413 A.2d at 915 n. 5 (Ferren, J., dissenting); see note 3 supra. Because “the facts are solely within the government’s control,” the majority imposes an “unfair if not impossible burden” *141on a claimant. Whitehurst, supra, 418 A.2d at 1029 (Ferren, J., dissenting). Commonly, therefore, absent an ability to prove what the police department will do, a claimant must wait until he or she reports for work to find out whether the denial of disability retirement was valid or, in reality, was a sham.
What really is happening is this: under the majority opinion, a police officer who is found to have a permanent partial disability and is incapable of performing his or her old job — but is capable of undertaking light duty work of an unspecified kind — has the right to report to work every day, in good faith, ready to undertake available light duty jobs that he or she is physically capable of performing. As long as the officer performs a proffered job, the department will have to keep paying the officer at his or her old rate, without regard to whether the job is normally assignable to a police officer and compensable at that level. See ante at 139; Woody v. Police and Firemen’s Retirement and Relief Board, 441 A.2d 987, 989 (D.C.1982); Rzepecki, supra, 429 A.2d at 1391 (Ferren, J., concurring). But suppose the officer disputes that he or she can perform the proffered job, or suppose the police department claims it does not have a light-duty job available (or does not want the officer, at his or her level of pay, to take a job that the department normally would fill more cheaply by hiring a lay person). In either case, as the majority concedes, ante at 139 n. 3, there will have to be another disability retirement proceeding, in order to determine once again — this time on the basis of facts— whether there is or is not “useful and efficient service,” at the officer’s last salary level, that he or she is physically capable of performing.
Whether the department eventually proffers a suitable light-duty job or not, the majority’s approach, at best, defers conclusive resolution of the very issue this proceeding supposedly is to decide. At worst, it either will put a claimant, for whom there does not turn out to be a realistic light-duty alternative, in a Catch-22 situation, or will permit the department to make irrational and uneconomic personnel choices by using relatively well paid officers for light duty that others could perform at less cost.
Possibly, through the use of discovery, including subpoena power, a disability claimant can force the light-duty job issue, and carry the required burden of proof, at the initial Board hearing. But that is an expensive and unfair burden which the government, itself, with all the information at hand, ought to assume.
Respectfully, therefore, I dissent. In remanding to the Board, however, I would include an instruction that petitioner’s claim should be denied if, as it would appear, he more recently has declined a suitable light-duty job at the required salary level. See note 3 supra.

. All parties agree that “disabled for useful and efficient service in the grade or class of position last occupied," D.C.Code § 4-607(2) (1981) (emphasis added), means the physical inability to perform any job proffered to the officer for a salary at least equal to his or her salary at the time the disabling injury occurred.

. We may judicially note that on October 15, 1982, fifteen months after the Board’s decision, the United States District Court found in an injunction action brought by petitioner Wells that the Metropolitan Police Department had offered Wells a “non-contact, office duty position in the Community Relations Division,” a position amounting to “clerical duties.” Wells v. District of Columbia, CA 81-1608 (D.D.C.1982). The court said it “can see no reason why plaintiff cannot report for the above duty.” Id. Although my colleagues in the majority cite this decision, they do not rely on it for their basic analysis, ante at 139 n. 4, and it does not affect what the Board should have required the government to show here.

. In my Seabolt dissent concerning an identical problem for a firefighter, I suggested the following approach:
[Ojnce the petitioner has demonstrated a disability from performing his last job, the Board should obtain the evidence necessary to resolve whether one or more categories of permanent light-duty work exists in the same grade or class as petitioner’s last job and, if so, whether an opening exists (or must be made available). As to these light-duty determinations, therefore, the government should bear the burden of refining the standard and coming forward with the evidence, failing which the petitioner’s claim to [D.C. Code] § 4-527 [now § 4-616] disability retirement will be established. If the government, however, does demonstrate the existence and availability of a light-duty alternative, then the burden of coming forward with evidence of disability to perform that less onerous job shifts back to the petitioner.
Seabolt, supra, 413 A.2d at 915 (Ferren, J., dissenting) (footnote omitted).