LaProvidenza v. State Emp. Retirement Commission

• Decision Date: 19 June 1979
• Citation: 178 Conn. 23,420 A.2d 905
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Antonio LaPROVIDENZA v. STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT COMMISSION.

Page 905

420 A.2d 905

178 Conn. 23

Antonio LaPROVIDENZA v. STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT COMMISSION.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Feb. 7, 1979.

Decided June 19, 1979.

Noel R. Newman, Fairfield, for appellant (plaintiff).

Charles A. Overend, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom, on the brief, were Carl R. Ajello, Atty. Gen., and Bernard F. McGovern, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee (defendant).

Before COTTER, C. J., and LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, LONGO and PETERS, JJ.

LONGO, Associate Justice.

The plaintiff has appealed from a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas in which he sought a declaratory judgment determining his retirement benefits as they were affected by the payment of a lump sum settlement under the Workmen's Compensation Act. The facts underlying this controversy are not in dispute: The plaintiff had been employed for many years by the city of Bridgeport. The city participates in Fund B of the Connecticut Municipal Employees' Retirement Fund which is administered by the defendant State Employees' Retirement Commission. The plaintiff was eligible for normal, voluntary age and service retirement on September 30, 1975, and did, in fact, retire on that date and begin to collect monthly retirement allowances. On November 7, 1975, pursuant to the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, the plaintiff entered into a stipulation with the city of Bridgeport for the settlement of a claim, pending at the time of his retirement, in the amount of $30,000 which was paid to him for an injury received during the course of his employment. Thereafter, on April 21, 1977, the commission notified the plaintiff that his retirement benefits were suspended as of April 1, 1977, until his total future payments of retirement benefits equaled the amount of the workmen's compensation award. The plaintiff then sought a declaratory ruling as to the validity of this order, and the commission responded that the order would stand.

Following this ruling, the plaintiff brought an action in the Court of Common Pleas requesting a declaratory judgment to determine whether § 7-436 of the General Statutes required a deduction of his workmen's compensation benefits from his retirement payments, and requesting reinstatement of the retirement payments with interest on the sums withheld. The trial court concluded, on a ground different from that of the commission, that all retirement benefits should be suspended pursuant to the formula set out in the final sentence of § 7-436(a). The plaintiff has appealed to this court, assigning as error the conclusion of the trial court that the workmen's compensation award received by the plaintiff should be deducted from his retirement benefits, and the suspension by the court of his retirement benefits.

The basis of the trial court's decision, and the plaintiff's claim of error, lies in its interpretation of § 7-436(a) of the General Statutes. ¹ The court was initially required to interpret the sentence in the statute which provides that "(a)ny amount or amounts received under the workmen's compensation act shall be deducted from such allowance." (Emphasis added.) The defendant commission maintains that the deduction referred to in the sentence quoted should be made in all cases of retirement, whether the retirement was for age and service or for disability. It was and remains the plaintiff's claim that, if the phrase "such allowance" is construed as referring back only to the immediately preceding sentence, the reduction for workmen's compensation payments is properly made only in instances of a retirement allowance "for permanent and total disability arising out of and in the course of his employment."

The trial court determined that the plaintiff was correct in his interpretation of the statutory language, concluding that the deduction of workmen's compensation payments from an employee's retirement allowance referred to in the statute did not refer to the retirement allowance in general, but related only to a retirement for reasons of disability. The court, however, found that the last sentence of § 7-436(a) required the suspension of the plaintiff's retirement allowance until his retirement benefits equaled the full amount of his workmen's compensation award.

Upon this state of the record, we are required first to determine whether the court was correct in its interpretation of the phrase "such allowance" as used in the eighteenth and twenty-third lines of § 7-436(a). We agree with the court's determination that the phrase in line twenty-three refers back only to the preceding use of the phrase in line eighteen, and with its conclusion, on the basis of this construction, that a suspension or reduction of retirement benefits is proper only where an employee initially retires for disability reasons.

To what antecedent does the phrase "such allowance" in the sentence "(a)ny amount or amounts received under the workmen's compensation act shall be deducted from such allowance " refer? It is reasonable and permissible statutory construction to conclude that the word "such" in the sentence at line twenty-three refers back to the prior sentence which speaks of " 'such allowance for permanent and total disability.' " Bahre v. Hogbloom, 162 Conn. 549, 555-56, 295 A.2d 547 (1972); Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Katona, 151 Conn. 417, 420, 198 A.2d 711 (1964). The word "such" has been construed as an adjective referring back to and identifying something previously spoken of; the word naturally, by grammatical usage, refers to the last antecedent. Estate of Hill, 214 Cal.App.2d 812, 820, 29 Cal.Rptr. 814 (1963); People ex rel. Miller v. Mobile & Ohio R. Co., 374 Ill. 376, 383, 29 N.E.2d 604 (1940); Joseph L. Pohl, Contractor, Inc. v. State Highway Commission, 431 S.W.2d 99, 105 (Mo.1968); State ex rel. King v. Board of Trustees, 192 Mo.App. 583, 589-90, 184 S.W. 929 (1916); Richardson-Merrell, Inc. v. Main, 240 Or. 533, 538, 402 P.2d 746 (1965); Sharlin v. Neighborhood Theatre, Inc., 209 Va. 718, 721, 167 S.E.2d 334 (1969); cf. 73 Am.Jur.2d, Statutes, § 244. The accepted dictionary definitions of "such" include "having a quality already or just specified," "previously characterized or specified," and "aforementioned." Webster, Third New International Dictionary; see Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Katona, supra, 151 Conn. 420, 198 A.2d 711.

Mindful, however, that the meaning of "such" in relation to the provisions of § 7-436(a) is not to be determined solely by resort to its dictionary definition, we consider the entire paragraph, the mischief it was designed to remedy and the policy underlying it. Dostman v. Zoning Board of Appeals, 143 Conn. 297, 300-301, 122 A.2d 19 (1956); 82 C.J.S. Statutes § 325; cf. Litchfield v. Bridgeport, 103 Conn. 565, 131 A. 560 (1925). In view of these factors, the correctness of the trial court's decision is fortified. The first time the phrase "such allowance" is used, it unquestionably refers to the "retirement allowance" in line three of the statute. On a further reading, however, the "allowance" the statute refers to at line eighteen is a retirement allowance based upon a "permanent and total disability." The very next sentence, herein in controversy, reduces "such allowance" by any amounts received under the Workmen's Compensation Act. In light of the accepted meaning of the word "such," these sentences, read together, make sense if the latter is construed to modify and delimit the former. It would be consonant with the legislative intention underlying this statute to hold that a retirement allowance for disability purposes should not be duplicated by payments under the Workmen's Compensation Act. It is entirely another matter, however, to construe the statute as authorizing the deduction of workmen's compensation benefits from normal and voluntary age and service retirement payments when the workmen's compensation benefits are wholly unrelated to the cause of retirement. The malady that the statute was intended to remedy is obviously a situation of duplicate payments occasioned by a retirement for disability reasons, followed by workmen's compensation payments for disability. In the present case, however, there would be no duplication of payment, and the statute should not be read to encompass the reduction of normal, nondisability retirement benefits on account of unrelated workmen's compensation benefits. ²

The plaintiff's right to retirement payments became vested as of September 30, 1975, the date of his retirement, and he was entitled to receive those payments regardless of whether he may have been disabled to some extent by an injury for which he was entitled to workmen's compensation benefits.

It is an elementary rule of construction that statutes should be considered as a whole, with a view toward reconciling their separate parts in order to render a reasonable overall interpretation; the application, moreover, of common sense to the statutory language is not to be excluded. United Aircraft Corporation v. Fusari, 163 Conn. 401, 411, 311 A.2d 65 (1972); Garbaty v. Norwalk Jewish Center, Inc., 148 Conn. 376, 382, 171 A.2d 197 (1961). We must avoid a consequence which fails to attain a rational and sensible result which bears most...