Ducharme v. City of Putnam

• Decision Date: 20 April 1971
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Adelard A. DUCHARME v. CITY OF PUTNAM et al.

Page 318

285 A.2d 318

161 Conn. 135

Adelard A. DUCHARME v. CITY OF PUTNAM et al.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

April 20, 1971.

Frank E. Dully, Hartford, for appellants (defendants).

Robert F. Taylor, Hartford, with whom, on the brief, were J. Ronald Regnier, William R. Moller, Edmund T. Curran, John J. Langenbach, and Robert B. Hempstead, Hartford, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before ALCORN, C.J., and HOUSE, THIM, RYAN and SHAPIRO, JJ.

HOUSE, Associate Justice.

The controlling issue on this appeal is a narrow one and the facts are not disputed. The plaintiff was a regular member of the paid police department of the city of Putnam and as a condition for that employment had in 1963 successfully passed a physical examination which failed to reveal any evidence of any condition or impairment of health caused by hypertension or heart disease. In August, 1969, while in the course of his employment as a police officer, the plaintiff sustained an anterior myocardial infarction because of a coronary occlusion and as a result has been totally incapacitated. At a hearing to determine the workmen's compensation benefits to which the plaintiff was entitled the only issue raised was whether the 1969 injury arose out of the plaintiff's employment. The defendants offered to produce evidence which would tend to show that the plaintiff's occlusion and infarction did not arise out of his employment but were unrelated thereto and due to systemic health conditions. The commissioner denied the offer of proof and, without evidence, but relying upon the conclusive presumption provided in General Statutes § 7-433a, ¹ found that the plaintiff's injury arose out of his employment and made an award on that basis.

It is the claim of the defendants that § 7-433a is unconstitutional because it provides an exclusive public emolument or privilege and results in a denial of equal protection of the law and because the conclusive presumption contained in that statute results in a denial to the defendants of equal protection of the law and deprives them of property without due process of law.

A preliminary question raised by the plaintiff is whether the defendant municipality has standing to attack the constitutionality of the statute. Earlier decisions of this court and of the United States Supreme Court would seem to indicate that the municipality lacks such standing. In Williams v. Mayor, 289 U.S. 36, 40, 53 S.Ct. 431, 432, 77 L.Ed. 1015, the latter court held: 'A municipal corporation, created by a state for the better ordering of government, has no privileges or immunities under the Federal Constitution which it may invoke in opposition to the will of its creator.' This court said in State ex rel. Bulkeley v. Williams, 68 Conn. 131, [161 Conn. 138] 149, 35 A. 24, 28: 'Towns have no inherent rights. They have always been the mere creatures of the colony or the state, with such functions, and such only, as were conceded or recognized by law.' See also Sanger v. Bridgeport, 124 Conn. 183, 190, 198 A. 746. These decisions, however, have not been followed with fidelity. Despite recognition of the impediment, in the Sanger case the court, nevertheless, discussed the merits of the constitutional argument advanced by the municipality as had earlier cases. See Baker v. West Hartford, 89 Conn. 394, 94 A. 283; Norwalk v. New Canaan, 85 Conn. 119, 81 A. 1027; Goshen v. Stonington, 4 Conn. 209.

The United States Supreme Court has in recent years greatly expanded the concept of standing since the Williams case, which was decided in the era of Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078, holding that taxpayers ordinarily do not have standing to attack the constitutionality of laws, and Alabama Power Co. v. Ickes, 302 U.S. 464, 58 S.Ct. 300, 82 L.Ed. 374, holding that a competitor did not have standing to contest the grant of a license to another company. The continuing validity of these earlier decisions has been largely eroded by such decisions as Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947, which held that an individual taxpayer can sue so long as he can show how he, as distinguished from taxpayers in general, is constitutionally affected by the particular provision attacked, and Hardin v. Kentucky Utilities Co., 390 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 651, 19 L.Ed.2d 787, which gave standing to a competitor in a license contest. In United States v. I.C.C., 337 U.S. 426, 431, 69 S.Ct. 1410, 1413, 93 L.Ed. 1451, the court, in effect, permitted the federal government to sue itself, concluding that 'the established principle that a person cannot create a justiciable controversy against himself has no application here.' Finally, in Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153, 90 S.Ct. 827, 830, 25 L.Ed.2d 184, the Supreme Court last year in a unanimous decision distinguished the concepts of 'standing' and 'legal interest,' nothing that '(t)he 'legal interest' test goes to the merits. The question of standing is different. It concerns, apart from the 'case' or 'controversy' test, the question whether the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question.' See also Investment Co. Institute v. Camp, 401 U.S. 617, 91 S.Ct. 1091, 28 L.Ed.2d 367. Here, the municipality, although a creation of the state government, is in disagreement with the state legislature about the interpretation of the constitution. It is a party which is adversely affected by the contested legislation and is properly in court on nonconstitutional questions. In the absence of some overriding reason which we do not find, such as the existence of a more appropriate party to raise the question, or a statute prohibiting municipalities from litigating constitutional issues, it would be an abdication of judicial responsibility for this court, having before it a controversy between a municipality and another party and having been apprised of the asserted constitutional infirmity in a legislative act, adversely affecting the interests of the municipality and its inhabitants, to adjudicate only the nonconstitutional questions when the latter may not be dispositive of the basic dispute. We hold, therefore, that the defendant municipality has sufficient legal interest and standing to raise constitutional issues in the present proceeding.

We turn now to the statute in question. As we have noted, § 7-433a provides that in the adjudication of claims for the payment of statutory workmen's compensation benefits, in the case of a uniformed member of a paid fire department or a regular member of a paid police department who successfully passed a physical examination on entry into the service, and the examination failed to reveal any evidence of hypertension or heart disease, any subsequent condition or impairment of health caused by such a condition and occurring whether the employee was either on duty or off duty shall be conclusively presumed to be a personal injury which arose out of and in the course of his employment and suffered in the line of duty and within the scope of his employment.

As the defendant municipality has properly argued, the presumption created by the statute being a conclusive one, and hence not rebuttable by proof of the actual facts, it would require an adjudication that a perfectly healthy off-duty Putnam policeman who brought on a heart attack by overexertion on the last day of a lengthy out-of-state vacation suffered the attack 'in the course of his employment,' 'in the line of duty' and 'within the scope of his employment' by the city-despite the circumstance that that situation was entirely without foundation in fact. Constitutionally, the legislature can no more bind the courts to such a factually unsupportable conclusive adjudication than it can require their adjudication that a camel is a horse by the enactment of a statutory conclusive presumption that all four-footed animals are horses.

' A presumption of law must be based upon facts of universal experience and be controlled by inexorable logic. 'It is asserted as a self-evident result of human reason and experience." Valentine v. Pollak, 95 Conn. 556, 561, 111 A. 869, 871. Even in the case of a rebuttable presumption, 'the fact which is specified to be prima facie evidence of the fact to be inferred or presumed must be a fact which in common experience leads naturally and logically to the fact inferred or presumed. In the mind of the trier, the proof of one must produce the belief that it is more probable than not that the other, the ultimate fact, is thereby established.' Mott's Super Markets, Inc. v. Frassinelli, 148 Conn. 481, 490, 172 A.2d 381, 385. In Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 467, 468, 63 S.Ct. 1241, 1245, 87 L.Ed. 1519, the United States Supreme Court laid down the rule that for a presumption to be constitutionally valid there must be a 'rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed. . . . But where the inference is so strained...