Grover v. Town of Manchester

• Decision Date: 04 March 1975
• Citation: 357 A.2d 922,168 Conn. 84
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Murlel P. GROVER v. TOWN OF MANCHESTER et al. (two cases).

Page 922

357 A.2d 922

168 Conn. 84

Murlel P. GROVER v. TOWN OF MANCHESTER et al. (two cases).

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

March 4, 1975.

Appeal Dismissed Oct. 6, 1975. See. 96 S.Ct 14.

Maurice T. FitzMaurice, Hartford, for appellant (named defendant in both cases).

Thomas P. FitzGerald, Manchester, with whom, on the brief, was Herbert A. Phelon, Jr., Manchester, for appellee (plaintiff in both cases).

Before HOUSE, C. J., and LOISELLE, MacDONALD, BOGDANSKI and LONGO, JJ. MacDONALD, Associate Justice.

The issues raised by these two reservations, one from the Superior Court and one from the Court of Common Pleas under the same name, are identical and involve the constitutionality of § 7-433c of the General Statutes entitled 'Benefits for policemen or firemen disabled or dead as a result of hypertension or heart disease.'

The relevant facts, as stipulated by the parties, are as follows: The plaintiff, Muriel Grover, is a dependent of Leo Grover, hereafter Grover, who died on September 7, 1971, from a coronary occlusion and who, at the time of his death, was employed as a regular paid member of the police department of the defendant town of Manchester. When first employed as a policeman, Grover successfully passed a physical examination which revealed no evidence of hypertension or heart disease. He did not sustain any accidental injury arising out of and in the course of his employment or suffer any repetitive trauma or acts which caused or contributed to his death, nor did he suffer from any occupational disease. His death was not compensable within the meaning of chapter 568 of the General Statutes, the Workmen's Compensation Act, and the commissioner, at a hearing, denied offers of the defendant town of Manchester to prove the foregoing facts concerning the cause of death. The commissioner also declined to decide the constitutional questions raised by the defendant town, and these questions, by stipulation, have been reserved to this court under the provisions of § 31-324 for reservations from the Superior Court, and § 31-301 for reservations from the Court of Common Pleas, in workmen's compensation appeals. The two questions thus reserved are as follows: (1) Does § 7-433c of the General Statutes deprive the town of Manchester of property without due process of law in violation of the due process clauses of the United States and Connecticut constitutions? (2) Does the class preference created by § 7-433c contravene § 1 of article first of the Connecticut constitution?

Section 7-433c recently was before us in Grover v. Manchester, 165 Conn. 615, 353 A.2d 719 raising a procedural issue which was decided without a resolution of the two collateral constitutional questions raised here. It was enacted in its present form in s971, as set forth in full in the footnote, ¹ within two weeks of our decision in Ducharme v. Putnam, 161 Conn. 135, 285 A.2d 318, which declared unconstitutional a predecessor statute, Public Acts 1969, No. 380 § 1 (§ 7-433a), which had attempted to provide benefits identical to those of the statute now before us by raising a conclusive presumption. In Ducharme, we did not consider the merits of the legislature's intended purpose but only the method employed to attain that purpose. In other words, our legislature promptly acted to do what this court could not and refused to do in Ducharme and rewrote the statute by simply providing special compensation, or even an outright bonus, to qualifying policemen and firemen.

As we stated recently in Whitfield v. Empire Mutual Ins. Co., 167 Conn. 499, 507, 356 A.2d 139, 144: "(A) plaintiff who attacks a statute on constitutional grounds has no easy burden.' . . . 'When the constitutionality of legislation is in question, it is the duty of the court to sustain it unless its invalidity is beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . It is a rule of statutory construction . . . that courts are bound to assume that the legislature, in enacting a particular law, did so upon proper motives and to accomplish a worthy objective." Although the statute under consideration is not regulatory, it does impose upon a town a financial obligation which, like restrictive regulations, is justified in the interest of promoting public safety, and does not deprive a town of property without due process of law.

It is difficult to call to mind any field of activity more closely related to the public safety than the encouragment of qualified individuals to seek employment as firemen and policemen. ² It is evident from the preamble to § 7-433c that the legislature took into consideration the peculiar problems and unusual risks attendant upon these occupations in determining that they properly occupy a different status from other municipal employees. No other group has to withstand the abuses and attacks tacks of the oppressed and frustrated of our modern society or carry with them a constant apprehension that they may be the target of maniacal revenge; no other municipal employees are called out from the security of their homes to ensure the security of the homes of others; no other municipal employees are required to make immediate decisions which are the subject of debate and deliberation in our courts. This is, indeed, class legislation somewhat analogous to the veterans' bonus legislation which passed the constitutional tests applied in Lyman v. Adorno, 133 Conn. 511, 514, 52 A.2d 702, and we refer to the extensive collection of authorities cited in the opinion in that case.

We conclude that the statute under consideration serves a proper public purpose and that, accordingly, the fact that it incidentally confers a direct benefit upon a certain class of individuals does not render it invalid as creating a class preference which contravenes § 1 of article first of the Connecticut constitution.

For the foregoing reasons, each of the two questions submitted to us by reservation from the Court of Common Pleas in No. 7591 must be answered in the negative.

Since the same two questions have been raised by reservation from the Superior Court in No. 7606, it would appear to serve no useful purpose and only to create unnecessary duplication of procedure and expense to require rendition of judgment in that court based upon identical answers. The reservation from the Court of Common Pleas was filed pursuant to § 31-301 of the General Statutes, which provides that all appeals from an award by a workmen's compensation commissioner shall be taken to the Court of Common Pleas. ³ As originally adopted in s961, this section provided for such appeals to be taken to the Superior Court, but it was amended in 1972 (Public Act No. 108, § 6, effective September 1, 1972) by the substitution throughout of 'Court of...