Adler v. City of Pasadena

• Decision Date: 03 September 1964
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: Janette D. ADLER, Executrix of the Last Will and Testament of Anthony Joseph Adler, Deceased, Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents. Mary D. BOUSLOG et al., Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents. Ralph R. BURRIS et al., Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents. Neil NELSON and Malvern R. Pieper, Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants and Appellants. Civ. 28113, Civ. 28114, Civ. 28115, Civ. 28116.

Page 373

40 Cal.Rptr. 373

229 Cal.App.2d 518

Janette D. ADLER, Executrix of the Last Will and Testament of Anthony Joseph Adler, Deceased, Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents.

Mary D. BOUSLOG et al., Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents.

Ralph R. BURRIS et al., Plaintiffs, Respondents and Appellants, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants, Appellants and Respondents.

Neil NELSON and Malvern R. Pieper, Plaintiffs and Respondents, v. CITY OF PASADENA et al., Defendants and Appellants.

Civ. 28113, Civ. 28114, Civ. 28115, Civ. 28116.

District Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 4, California.

Sept. 3, 1964.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 18, 1964.

Hearing Denied Oct. 28, 1964.

Kenneth Sperry, Long Beach, David Goldman, Pasadena, John L. Kaesman, Long Beach, for plaintiffs.

Wendell R. Thompson, City Atty., Fred R. Metheny, Asst. City Atty., Evelynn M. Finn, and Robert A. Neher, Deputy City Attys., Pasadena, for defendants.

KINGSLEY, Justice.

This proceeding involves consolidated appeals by plaintiffs ¹ (with the exception of plaintiffs Nelson and Pieper, who have not appealed from the judgment), and by defendants ² from a judgment determining that defendants are liable to plaintiffs for unpaid pension benefits which accrued within six months prior to the filing of a formal claim therefor. Defendants' appeals are concerned with the sole issue of whether or not the plaintiffs were entitled to prejudgment interest pursuant to the provisions of section 3287 of the Civil Code. Plaintiffs' appeals are primarily concerned with the issue of whether or not plaintiffs are entitled to unpaid pension benefits which accrued within six months prior to the filing of a formal claim therefor, instead of those unpaid pension benefits which accrued from and after six months prior to the filing, in the year 1958, of written applications for the payment of increased pension benefits. Plaintiff Burris in his appeal has raised the additional issue of whether the trial court erred in determining that his pension should be based upon the rank of 'Sergeant' rather than 'Motorcycle Sergeant.'

A history of this complex litigation, pertinent to the issues herein involved, may be summarized as follows: The plaintiffs in this consolidated appeal are retired members of the police or fire departments of the defendant City of Pasadena, or the widows or personal representatives of such retired members. All of these city firemen and policemen became such during a period of time when the charter of the City of Pasadena provided for monthly pension payments on a fluctuating basis (i. e., based upon salaries currently being paid from time to time) rather than in fixed amounts determined at the time of retirement. In 1935, the Pasadena City Charter was amended, changing the pension system from the fluctuating to the fixed method of computing pension payments and imposing for the first time the requirement of employee contributions by way of deductions from salary.

In 1958, the California Supreme Court ruled in Abbott v. City of Los Angeles (1958) 50 Cal.2d 438, 445, 447-455, 326 P.2d 484, that charter amendments by which fixed payment pensions were substituted for fluctuating were unreasonable and a breach of contract as applied to employees who became such prior to date of the amendments.

In July, August and September of 1958, plaintiffs filed applications, in duplicate, with O. A. Dietrich, who was the secretary to the Fire and Police Retirement Board of the City of Pasadena (hereinafter Retirement Board), as well as city controller, for increases in the pensions they were then receiving to amounts computed pursuant to the Pasadena City Charter prior to its 1935 amendment. The Retirement Board referred the matter to the city attorney of Pasadena for investigation. After an investigation of the matter, the city attorney sent a nine page letter, dated September 4, 1958, to the Retirement Board, containing a detailed analysis of the claims in question, as well as an exposition of the law relating thereto, including a construction of the Abbott case, and the case of Allen v. City of Long Beach (1955) 45 Cal.2d 128, 287 P.2d 765, and concluding that, in the city attorney's opinion, the rights of a member of the Fire and Police Retirement System are dependent upon the charter provisions in effect at the time of retirement and not upon the provisions in effect at the time of employment, and that 'the recent Los Angeles cases relied upon by applicants do not change said rule of law. * * * In view of all the circumstances discussed herein it is our opinion that each and every claim under discussion should be denied.' Based upon the After initiation of legal proceedings, the Adler-Bouslog cases came to trial in February of 1960. Judgments were eventually entered in favor of plaintiffs in each case in June 1960, by which it was determined that the city was under a contractual obligation to pay to each plaintiff, so entitled, a fluctuating pension based upon the provisions of the Pasadena City Charter as they existed prior to the 1935 charter amendments above summarized and that the salary deductions for pension contributions were unauthorized. By its decision, the trial court also held that none of plaintiffs' causes of action in either case were barred by the provisions of Article 11 of the Pasadena City Charter and a money judgment was entered for all unpaid pension benefits and unauthorized salary deductions which had accrued through the period commencing three years prior to the filing of the complaint up to June 1, 1960. Defendants perfected an appeal from that portion of the judgment in each case which awarded to the respective plaintiffs 'those amounts designated as a 'total amount due as of June 1, 1960,'' and which adjudges thereby 'that the limitations imposed by the provisions of Article 11 of the Pasadena City Charter are not applicable to the claims presented herein by plaintiffs and each of them.' On such appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that recovery should be limited to such unpaid pension benefits and unauthorized salary deductions as had accrued within six months prior to the filing by each plaintiff of a claim therefor. (Adler v. City of Pasadena (1962) 57 Cal.2d 609, 21 Cal.Rptr. 579, 371 P.2d 315.) The court then reversed the judgments 'with directions to the trial court to enter judgments in favor of plaintiffs in accordance with the conclusions declared in the foregoing opinion, if the court finds that it can do so upon the present record, and, if not, then the court is directed to take such further evidence as may be necessary to compute the amounts due to each plaintiff, to make such computations, and thereupon to enter judgments accordingly.'

city attorney's recommendation, the Retirement Board denied plaintiffs' applications for increased pension benefits. Some time in 1959 and 1960 plaintiffs herein filed additional claims which set forth in more detail the basis of their respective claims, including the precise amount which had then allegedly accrued on account of unpaid pension benefits. These later claims were denied both by the Retirement Board and by the board of directors of the defendant city.

While the appeals were pending in the Adler-Bouslog cases, suits were instituted in the Burris-Nelson cases; upon the remand of the Adler-Bouslog cases, the Adler-Bouslog, Burris-Nelson cases were consolidated for pretrial and trial purposes. In light of the holding in the Adler appeal, plaintiffs' counsel moved the court for leave to amend the complaints in the Adler-Bouslog, Burris-Nelson cases to allege that plaintiffs had substantially complied with the claims provisions of Article 11 of the Pasadena City Charter when plaintiffs filed their claims in 1958. This motion was denied. However, plaintiffs' other motions for leave to amend their complaints for prejudgment interest were granted. At the conclusion of this trial, the court found 'that while certain plaintiffs filed written applications with the defendant Retirement Board of the Pasadena Fire and Police Retirement System for the payment of increased benefits in the year 1958 * * * which were eventually rejected by the defendant Board upon advice of the City Attorney of defendant city, none of said written applications constituted claims within the purview of, or were in compliance with the provisions of, Article 11 of the Pasadena City Charter. The court finds, however, that the amount of unpaid pension benefits, and the interest which accrued thereon in favor of each party plaintiff throughout the period beginning six months prior to the filing of such written applications and ending April 15, 1963, and the total unpaid pension benefits and interest, respectively, which would be recoverable by each such plaintiff from the defendant city if such written applications were determined to constitute substantial Accordingly, the judgment in each case limited the recovery of each party plaintiff to those amounts which accrued within six months prior to the filing of a formal claim in 1959 or 1960. It excluded any recovery on account of the amounts which accrued prior to that period and within six months prior to the filing in 1958 of the earlier applications for payment of increased pension benefits in behalf of the same plaintiffs. However, the trial court in its finding of fact number 3 found what recovery each plaintiff would be entitled to in the event it should be determined that the applications that were filed with the Retirement Board in 1958 constituted substantial compliance with the claims provisions of the Pasadena City Charter.

compliance with the provisions of Article 11 of said charter * * *'

I

APPEAL BY DEFENDANTS FROM THAT PORTION OF THE JUDGMENT AWARDING PLAINTIFFS PREJUDGMENT INTEREST.

In Abbott v. City...