 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Plymouth County Retirement Board v. Contributory Retirement Appeal Board12/4/2003
Suffolk.
June 5, 2003
Practice, Civil, Appeal. Retirement. Public Employment, Accidental disability retirement. Contributory Retirement Appeal Board. Administrative Law, Proceedings before agency. Words, "Personal injury."
The defendant Donald E. Newman appeals from a Superior Court judgment vacating a decision of the Contributory Retirement Appeal Board (CRAB) that awarded him accidental disability retirement benefits, G. L. c. 32, § 7(1). Newman had sought benefits because of major depression, engendered by his work in the winter of 1995-1996. December, 1995, was a particularly snowy month in West Bridgewater (town), and employees of the highway department, of which Newman was the superintendent, had to expend extra hours to keep the town's streets open and sanded. Conflicts arose between Newman and members of his highway crew, and between Newman and at least one other town official. The last incident occurred on January 4, 1996. Newman never returned to work after that incident. He then sought accidental disability retirement.
A regional medical panel consisting of three psychiatrists evaluated Newman and certified to the plaintiff, the Plymouth County retirement board (board), that he was unable to perform the duties of his job ; that his disability was likely to be permanent; and that his disability was the natural and proximate result of his "reported work stresses." On May 28, 1998, the board rejected Newman's application for accidental disability retirement on the ground that the incidents were "not sufficient to warrant an accidental disability retirement." Newman appealed to CRAB pursuant to G. L. c. 32, § 16(4). There the matter was heard de novo, see Namay v. Contributory Retirement Appeal Bd., 19 Mass. App. Ct. 456, 461-462 (1985), before an administrative magistrate at the Division of Administrative Law Appeals. Based on her specific findings of fact, the magistrate recommended that the board's decision to deny benefits be affirmed. Newman filed objections to the administrative magistrate's decision. Incorporating the magistrate's findings as its own, but disagreeing with her conclusions, CRAB decided that those findings, in conjunction with the affirmative certification by the medical panel, supported an award in Newman's favor.
The board sought judicial review of CRAB's decision in the Superior Court pursuant to G. L. c. 30A, § 14. Acting on the board's motion for judgment on the pleadings, the motion judge vacated CRAB's decision. He ruled that Newman, as matter of law, was not entitled to benefits and remanded the matter to CRAB "for proceedings consistent with this opinion." A second Superior Court judge, at Newman's request, vacated the first judge's order and reinstated the order as of a later date.
1. There is a threshold question not raised by either party.
The language of the judgment suggests that this appeal is interlocutory in nature. Prior to the motion judge's ruling on the board's motion on the pleadings, the board argued, among other things, that a remand to CRAB was necessary because CRAB failed to provide sufficient reasons for its rejection of a particular finding concerning one of the three incidents that triggered Newman's "break-down" in 1996. Rejecting this, the motion judge found that "Newman is not entitled to compensation for any of the incidents described in his application for [accidental disability retirement] benefits." We are handicapped -- and so far as appears from the record, so are the parties -- by not having an explanation of why a remand to CRAB was necessary. We need not, however, continue the tortured procedural history of the case because it appears that the motion judg
Page 1 2 3 4 5 Massachusetts Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|