Becker v. Town of Newbury

• Decision Date: 09 October 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-P-1068.,07-P-1068.
• Citation: 894 N.E.2d 629,72 Mass. App. Ct. 807
• Parties: Susan BECKER v. TOWN OF NEWBURY.
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

894 N.E.2d 629

72 Mass. App. Ct. 807

Susan BECKER v. TOWN OF NEWBURY.

No. 07-P-1068.

Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

Argued April 7, 2008.

Decided October 9, 2008.

Robert C. Tommasino, Boston, for the plaintiff.

Ginny Sinkel Kremer, Boston, Town Counsel, for the defendant.

Present: McHUGH, KATZMANN, & GRAINGER, JJ.

McHUGH, J.

Susan Becker, the plaintiff, worked as a reserve police officer in the town of Newbury (town) from 1995 until late January, 2001, when she struck her head on a cabinet while investigating a breaking and entering. She suffered a concussion and a cervical sprain and never returned to work. Instead, she began receiving disability payments from the town.

In July, 2002, Becker filed suit against the town, claiming that it had inaccurately calculated the disability benefits she was entitled to receive under G.L. c. 41, § 111F, which governs paid leave for incapacitated employees.¹ She also claimed that the town had improperly refused to pay her the benefit to which she was entitled under G.L. c. 32, § 85H, which provides benefits to reserve police officers who are injured in the line of duty to the point where they no longer can perform the duties of their regular occupation.

On the parties' cross motions for summary judgment, a judge of the Superior Court, in a thoughtful memorandum of decision, agreed that the town had properly calculated Becker's benefits under § 111F to be $144.36 per week based on the average of her earnings during the twelve months preceding her injury, and had properly declined to pay her the benefits provided by § 85H. Becker timely appealed. We affirm.

Becker's first argument on appeal is that although her average weekly earnings over the twelve months before her injury were in fact $144.36, she was entitled to benefits of $398.89, the amount she anticipated receiving during the week she was injured. She bases that claim on the language of § 111F, as appearing in St.1964, c. 149, which provides that officers who are incapable of working because of duty-related injuries "shall be granted leave without loss of pay for the period of such incapacity." In Becker's view, the phrase "leave without loss of pay" means leave with the weekly wage the employee was earning at the moment of the injury, regardless of what she had earned in the past or could anticipate earning in the future.

The problem, of course, centers on construction of the phrase "leave without loss of pay," because the Legislature has not specified how to determine the "pay" the injured employee should not lose on account of the injury. Theoretically, that "pay" could be the employee's earnings during the hour before the injury, the average hourly wages over the course of the employee's service with the employer or something in between.

The origin of the statute provides a context for determining the "pay" that § 111F is designed to safeguard. In Wormstead v. Town Manager of Saugus, 366 Mass. 659, 663 n. 5, 322 N.E.2d 171 (1975), the Supreme Judicial Court observed that the Commonwealth's original workers' compensation statute, enacted in 1911, provided no coverage for government employees. Thereafter, a series of amendments to the statute afforded most government employees benefits analogous to those received by their counterparts in the private sector. The statute never was extended, however, to police officers or fire fighters. In the court's view, § 111F was designed to fill that gap. Ibid.

Given that gap-filling foundation, the court in Wormstead concluded that § 111F's benefit-triggering phrase "injury sustained in the performance of his duty," as appearing in St.1964, c. 149, was comparable to, and should be construed in the same manner as, the benefit-triggering phrase "personal injury arising out of and in the course of his employment" found in the Workers' Compensation Act, see G.L. c. 152, § 26, as appearing in St.1943, § 8. Id. at 663, 322 N.E.2d 171. Thereafter, when faced with a question regarding the proper construction of § 111F, both this court and the Supreme Judicial Court consistently have referred to construction of analogous provisions of the workers' compensation statute. See, e.g., Corbett v. Related Cos. N.E., Inc., 424 Mass. 714, 721, 677 N.E.2d 1153 (1997); DiGloria v. Chief of Police of Methuen, 8 Mass.App.Ct. 506, 512, 395 N.E.2d 1297 (1979); Blair v. Selectmen of Brookline, 24 Mass.App.Ct. 261, 263-264, 508 N.E.2d 628 (1987).²

Against that backdrop, we think that "pay" under § 111F ordinarily should be determined by the average weekly wage the police officer or the fire fighter earned during the year preceding her incapacitating injury.³ That wage is the baseline for calculating benefits under the workers' compensation statute, see G.L. c. 152, §§ 1(1), 34, 34A, 35, and, given the origin of § 111F, is an appropriate reference for use when calculating the "pay" of injured fire fighters and police officers.⁴

Equally important, calculating an injured person's "pay" on the basis of his or her average weekly earnings over the twelve months preceding the injury protects both the employer and the employee against the vagaries of wage fluctuations produced largely by chance. This case, and the arguments Becker makes, illustrate the effect such fluctuations may have.

The four full years preceding Becker's injury witnessed a steady decline in her annual earnings as a reserve police officer. In 1997, she earned $20,242.10; in 1998, she earned $18,520.09; in 1999, she earned 10,735.34; and in 2000, the year before her injury, she earned $7,330.83. Her earnings over that period were, in sum, steadily declining.⁵ For reasons the record does not reflect her earnings for the first two weeks of January, 2001, spiked to a weekly average of $392.76, which, if extended for the entire year would have produced an annual wage of $20,423.52, the greatest amount she would have earned during the five years the record covers.

Notwithstanding the steady annual decline and the brief spike, Becker, as noted, claims that she is entitled to weekly compensation under § 111F in the amount of $398.89, or $20,742.28 annually, because she claims she was on track to earn that amount during the third week of January, 2001, when she was injured.⁶ Acceptance of Becker's approach, however, would mean that the compensation provided by § 111F would depend almost entirely on chance.

In this case, Becker's approach would saddle taxpayers with an obligation to pay § 111F compensation at a rate higher than the record shows Becker ever had earned simply because of the fortuity that she was injured while earning at a momentary high level. We say "momentary" because despite Becker's claims that resolution of several personal issues meant that she was available for more work than she had been in the past, there is no evidence in the record that the town was prepared to have her work the maximum number of hours she claimed to have available. In a different case, Becker's approach could produce a result highly disadvantageous to the injured employee. Although Becker was injured at a high point in her earnings, she just as easily could have been injured when her anticipated weekly wage was far lower than her historical earnings. Becker's approach would mean that, in those circumstances, she would have been entitled to compensation at a rate far lower than the rate the town in fact provided.

We think that the Legislature could not have intended to create a scheme in which taxpayers, police officers, and fire fighters all were dependent on the vagaries of chance to determine the compensation due for work-related injuries. Absent other circumstances, basing compensation on historical annual averages is the best method for preserving the "pay" with which the Legislature was manifestly concerned when it enacted § 111F. Indeed, we think that, as Becker herself states, "[S]he should be paid benefits that most accurately reflect her projected lost earnings during her period of disability." In the absence of circumstances this case does not present, we think that that reflection is found in her earnings over the preceding twelve months.

We are unpersuaded by Becker's reliance on G.L. c. 32, § 7(2)(a )(ii), to support her claim that she is entitled to payment under § 111F in an amount equal to her anticipated earnings during the week she was injured. Section 7(2)(a)(ii) provides that if a police officer qualifies for accidental disability retirement benefits, those benefits are seventy-two percent of her annual rate of compensation on the date of injury or seventy-two percent of her average annual rate of compensation over the preceding twelve months, whichever is greater. That section, in Becker's view, provides the model for calculating benefits payable under § 111F, and under that model, average weekly earnings over the preceding twelve months are to be used as the basis for compensation only when those earnings are greater than the injured officer's annual rate of compensation on the date of the injury.

First of all, however, the Legislature did not use in § 111F the language it used in § 7(2)(a)(ii). See, e.g., Petrucci v. Board of Appeals of Westwood, 45 Mass.App.Ct. 818, 823 n. 8, 702 N.E.2d 47 (1998). Second, the model does not produce the result Becker seeks; to apply the phrase "annual rate of compensation," as appearing in St.1987, c. 697, § 33, at least in the case of an hourly employee, one must know both the hourly wage and the annual hours it is reasonable to expect the employee will work. Here, the record reflects no dispute about the applicable hourly wage, so the only variable...