Mitsuuchi v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 15 December 1988
• Docket Number: No. 66462,66462
• Citation: 532 N.E.2d 830,125 Ill.2d 489,127 Ill.Dec. 1
• Parties: , 127 Ill.Dec. 1 Anita MITSUUCHI, Appellee, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO et al. (Juan Arjona, Appellant).
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

Page 830

532 N.E.2d 830

125 Ill.2d 489, 127 Ill.Dec. 1

Anita MITSUUCHI, Appellee, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO et al. (Juan Arjona, Appellant).

No. 66462.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Dec. 15, 1988.

Judson H. Miner, Corp. Counsel, Chicago (Ruth M. Moscovitch and Joseph A. Moore, of counsel), for appellant.

Carr & O'Rourke Associates, Chicago (Donald A. Carr and Robert R. Dlugajczyk, of counsel), for appellee.

Justice CUNNINGHAM delivered the opinion of the court:

On July 10, 1983, at about 5 p.m., plaintiff, Anita Mitsuuchi, a Chicago police officer, was a passenger in a Chicago police department squad car. The squad car was driven by defendant, Juan Arjona, a fellow police officer. Near the intersection of Wrightwood and Kedzie Avenues, the driver, Arjona, swerved the squad car to avoid striking a vehicle that had driven through a stop sign. The squad car left the roadway and struck a light pole. Plaintiff was injured, and brought a common law action in negligence against defendants, City of Chicago (City) and Arjona, her fellow officer.

Defendants filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint on the grounds that plaintiff's action was barred by sections 22-306 and 22-307 of the Illinois Pension Code (Pension Code) (Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 108 1/2, pars. 22-306, 22-307), and sections 22-18 through 22-22 of the Chicago Municipal Code (Chicago Municipal Code §§ 22-18 through 22-22 (1969)). The circuit court of Cook County dismissed with prejudice plaintiff's complaint against the City and Arjona.

The appellate court affirmed the circuit court's dismissal of plaintiff's complaint against the City, but reversed the circuit court's dismissal of plaintiff's claim against defendant Arjona, and remanded the cause to the circuit court of Cook County. (164 Ill.App.3d 815, 115 Ill.Dec. 788, 518 N.E.2d 313.) We allowed defendant Arjona's petition for leave to appeal pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 315 (107 Ill.2d R. 315).

The issue presented is whether sections 22-306 and 22-307 of the Pension Code (Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 108 1/2, pars. 22-306, 22-307) and sections 22-18 through 22-22 of the Chicago Municipal Code (Chicago Municipal Code §§ 22-18 through 22-22 (1969)) bar a police officer from bringing a common law negligence action against a fellow police officer for personal injury sustained in the line of duty. Does a negligent police officer share the City's immunity (under the Pension Code) from a common law negligence action by a fellow police officer for injuries suffered in the line of duty?

Before answering this question, we shall briefly summarize pertinent provisions of the Pension Code. Section 22-306 of the Pension Code provides in part:

"The corporate authorities of any city or the village may provide by ordinance that in case of an accident resulting in an injury to or death of a policeman or fireman in the employ of such city or village while in the performance of his duties, the officer at the head of the department or such other officer as may be designated may secure and provide proper medical care and hospital treatment for any such policeman or fireman. The city or village may incur the expense aforesaid and appropriate and pay for the same.

If any such accident shall be due to the negligence of some person or corporation that would be liable in damages therefor, the city or village may recover any expense of medical care and hospital treatment expended by it from the person or corporation liable." Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 108 1/2, par. 22-306.

If this provision were viewed in isolation, the benefit of it to a municipality might be uncertain. There is, however, a substantial direct financial incentive for a municipality to enact an ordinance in accordance with section 22-306. This incentive is set forth in section 22-307 of the Pension Code as follows:

"Common law or statutory rights barred. Whenever any city or village enacts an ordinance pursuant to this Division, no common law or statutory right to recover damages against such city or village for injury or death sustained by any policeman or fireman while engaged in the line of his duty as such policeman or fireman, other than the payment of the allowances of money and of the medical care and hospital treatment provided in such ordinance, shall be available to any policeman or fireman who is covered by the provisions of such ordinance, or to anyone wholly or partially dependent upon such policeman or fireman, or to the legal representative of the estate of such policeman or fireman, or to anyone who would otherwise be entitled to recover damages for such injury or death." Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 108 1/2, par. 22-307.

The City did, in fact, invoke the authority vested in it by section 22-306 of the Pension Code; the City enacted sections 22-18 through 22-22 of the Municipal Code, which sections set forth the City's responsibilities to pay for the care and treatment of injuries sustained by the City's police officers while in the performance of their duties. In this regard, section 22-19 of the Municipal Code provides:

"The committee on finance of the city council is hereby authorized, directed and empowered to provide for payment for proper medical care and hospital treatment for accidental injuries sustained by any policeman * * * while in the performance of his duties * * *." Chicago Municipal Code § 22-19 (1969).

The appellate court found that because the City had enacted (pursuant to section 22-306 of the Pension Code) sections 22-18 through 22-22 of the Municipal Code, plaintiff could not maintain a common law negligence action against it, and neither party has questioned this ruling. Arjona, however, questions the correctness of the appellate court's ruling that he was not protected under section 22-307 of the Pension Code as an employee of the City. Arjona acknowledges that section 22-307 does not explicitly mention employees as being immune from common law negligence suits by their coworkers. He contends, however, that reading the legislation in light of its apparent purpose, we must construe the language granting immunity to a "city or village" as encompassing actions against the fellow officers of the city or village.

As this court noted in Krimmel v. Eielson (1950), 406 Ill. 202, 92 N.E.2d 767, the cardinal task of statutory construction is to ascertain the intent of the General Assembly. Although the General Assembly did not record, in any currently available documents, a discussion of the objective of sections 22-306 and 22-307, the purpose can hardly be doubted. The statutory mechanism is similar to that of the Workers" Compensation Act (Ill.Rev.Stat.1987, ch. 48, pars. 138.1 through 138.30), and Illinois courts have indicated that it is proper to utilize statutes on similar subject matters as an aid to the construction of a statutory provision at issue (see Bergin v. Board of Trustees (1964), 31 Ill.2d 566, 574, 202 N.E.2d 489; Freberg v. Board of Trustees of Firemen's Pension Fund (1970), 128 Ill.App.2d 369, 262 N.E.2d 22). This court has stated repeatedly the objectives of the Workers' Compensation Act, as gleaned from the Act itself. We discussed the purposes of the Workers' Compensation Act in Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc. (1978), 74 Ill.2d 172, 23 Ill.Dec. 559, 384 N.E.2d 353, as follows:

"Pursuant to the statutory scheme implemented by the Act, the employee gave up his common law rights to sue his employer in tort, but recovery for injuries arising out of and in the course of his employment became automatic without regard to any fault on his part. The employer, who gave up the right to plead the numerous common law defenses, was compelled to pay, but his liability became fixed under a strict and comprehensive statutory scheme, and was not subjected to the sympathies of jurors whose compassion for fellow employees often led to high recovery. [Citation.] This trade-off between employer and employee promoted the fundamental purpose of the Act, which was to afford protection to employees by providing them with prompt and equitable compensation for their injuries. [Citation.]" 74 Ill.2d at 180-81, 23 Ill.Dec. 559, 384 N.E.2d 353.

Thus, the Workers' Compensation Act, and in our view the Pension Code provisions here at issue, are intended in part to protect the employee from the financial burden of either (1) bearing certain costs himself or (2) litigating the matter against his employer to a distant and uncertain conclusion. We note parenthetically that the supreme court of at least one other State has found that statutes governing disability, pension and death benefits for fire fighters and police officers serve purposes equivalent to workers' compensation (see Goebel v. City of Cedar Rapids (Iowa 1978), 267 N.W.2d 388), and that the court in Sweeney v. City of Chicago (1971), 131 Ill.App.2d 537, 266 N.E.2d 689, observed, "The system created for the compensation of injured police officers under the Illinois Pension Code is...