Stork v. State of California
| Decision Date | 30 September 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 15236,15236 |
| Citation | 62 Cal.App.3d 465,133 Cal.Rptr. 207 |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Donald F. STORK, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. STATE of California et al., Defendants and Respondents. |
Michael D. Stump, Calif. State Employees' Assn., Sacramento, for plaintiff-appellant.
Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen., Jeffrey L. Gunther, Deputy Atty. Gen., Sacramento, for defendants-respondents.
Plaintiff, a member of the Public Employees Retirement System, brought this declaratory relief action against the state to challenge the constitutionality of a 1972 statute which altered his retirement benefits. The trial court granted the state's motion for summary judgment and plaintiff appeals.
No judgment as such was signed or entered. The last action of the trial court on file is an order granting the state's motion for summary judgment. After the order was filed, plaintiff filed a purported appeal from the judgment. The order is not even a declaration of rights favoring the defendant and adverse to the plaintiff, but could be interpreted as an exercise of the court's discretionary power to withhold declaratory relief. Nevertheless, we are reluctant to destroy the parties' assumption that they have presented an effective appeal. The facts are uncontested and the issue is one of law. Where, from the record, the reviewing court is able to ascertain that the trial court intended a declaration of rights adverse to the plaintiff, the absence of an express declaration is error but not a ground for reversal. (Anderson v. Stansbury, 38 Cal.2d 707, 717, 242 P.2d 305; California Chiropractic Assn. v. Board of Administration, 40 Cal.App.3d 701, 704, 115 Cal.Rptr. 286.) Here, the parties' summary judgment papers debated the constitutional question, and the court filed a notice of intended decision expressing the judge's view that the statute was constitutional. Thus, we interpret the order granting the state's motion for summary judgment as a final judgment declaring the validity of the 1972 modification of retirement benefits.
A change of retirement law which diminishes earned pension rights of public employees violates constitutional prohibitions against impairment of the obligations of contracts; the prohibition does not immunize employees against all changes; modifications may be made in the earned pension rights of active empoloyees if they are reasonable and related to the theory of a sound pension system and if changes detrimental to the individual are offset by comparable new advantages. (Abbott v. City of Los Angeles (1958) 50 Cal.2d 438, 449, 326 P.2d 484; City of Downey v. Board of Administration (1975) 47 Cal.App.3d 621, 632, 121 Cal.Rptr. 295.) The employee is entitled to no more and no less than preservation of the 'reasonable expectations' generated by the pension system. (Lyon v. Flournoy (1969) 271 Cal.App.2d 774, 782, 787, 76 Cal.Rptr. 869.)
Plaintiff was born in February 1919. He became a member of what is now the Public Employees' Retirement System in December 1948, six months after he commenced work for the state Department of Fish and Game. During the following years he worked continuously for the department. During those years the retirement law provided a service retirement formula for employees in the ordinary, nonhazardous state positions. These were called State miscellaneous members. The law also contained a number of separate retirement formulae for employees in the somewhat more hazardous 'public safety' occupations, establishing separate categories for prison, patrol, warden, narcotics enforcement and law enforcement members. As a fish and game warden, plaintiff bore the classification of Warden member.
In 1961, plaintiff availed himself of a statutory option by which he rejected combined coverage under the state system and the Social Security Act and elected to accept the service retirement formula established for State miscellaneous members. The latter formula is described in Government Code section 21251.13.
In 1972 legislation was adopted abolishing the special retirement formulae for most public safety employees and gathering them into a single category of State safety member. (See Gov.Code, § 20014.) The new legislation became operative on April 1, 1973. Applied to plaintiff, this legislation abolished his status as a Warden member and classified him as a State safety member. (Gov.Code, § 20017.9.) The service retirement formula applicable to state safety members is set out in Government Code section 21252.6. Shaped by the variant factors of length of service and age at retirement, the latter provides a different scale of retirement allowances than that accorded state miscellaneous members under section 21251.13.
On the assumption of a monthly salary of $1,420.94 immediately preceding plaintiff's retirement, the following table depicts the monthly service retirement allowance (and its actuarial equivalent) available to him as a state safety member (under Gov.Code, § 21252.6) as compared with that available to him as a state miscellaneous member (under Gov.Code, § 21251.13):
MISCELLANEOUS SAFETY
---------------------------------- ----------------------
Age at Monthly Actuarial Monthly Actuarial
Retirement Allowance Equivalent Allowance Equivalent
---------- --------- ----------- --------- -----------
54 $ 440.82 $ 74,562.94 $614.89 $104,005.42
55 490.89 81,211.86 695.32 115,032.35
56 546.42 88,357.75 723.74 117,030.93
57 607.75 95,983.78 752.16 118,790.89
58 676.77 104,313.94 780.58 120,314.70
59 753.18 113,202.95 809.00 121,592.70
60 837.41 122,625.30 837.41 122,625.30
61 923.86 131,688.85 865.83 123,417.14
62 1015.87 140,810.76 894.25 123,952.89
63 1115.51 150,198.96 922.67 124,233.82
64 1149.87 150,227.07 951.09 124,257.06
65 1184.23 149,924.70 979.51 124,006.95
The parties do not quarrel over the public objectives of the 1972 statutory changes and their relationship to the retirement system's soundness. It is helpful briefly to describe these general objectives. The 1972 legislation had been preceded by studies by the Board of Administration of the Public Employees Retirement System, the state Legislative Analyst and the Assembly Committee on Retirement Systems. In summary, these studies recommended merger of separate retirement classes of public safety employees into a single class of state safety members; declared that early retirement of safety employees should be encouraged by means of relatively high retirement allowances in the early years of retirement eligibility; stated that early retirement inducement would lower the average age of safety employees' in active service, thus contributing to a generally high level of physical ability necessary for the effective performance of public safety tasks; observed that, although some safety members viewed early retirement as a reward, the real objective of early retirement is the benefit to fellow employees and the public. These studies infer that the reduction of safety members' benefit scales after age 60 would induce retirement before the ravages of time impair their general level of physical ability.
The above comparison table illustrates how the 1972 legislature sought to achieve these objectives. At retirement ages below 60, the benefit scale for safety members is markedly higher than the scale for miscellaneous members. At age 60 the benefits are at parity. After that age the balance shifts in favor of the miscellaneous member. Between the retirement ages of 61 and 65 the law accords miscellaneous members a higher scale of allowances than safety members.
The shift of advantage from one category to the other is accentuated by comparing the allowances (based upon plaintiff's assumed salary at retirement) payable for retirement at ages 55 and 65. Upon retirement at 55, the safety member receives a monthly allowance $204.43 higher than the miscellaneous member; the actuarial value of the former allowance is $32,820.49 higher than the latter. At age 65 the advantage has shifted to the miscellaneous member. At 65 the safety member receives a monthly allowance $204.72 less than the miscellaneous member; the actuarial value of the former's allowance is $25,917.75 less than the miscellaneous member's.
Plaintiff's claim of contract impairment stems from his enforced reclassification as a safety member and his deprivation of the benefit scale fixed for miscellaneous members. At this writing he has reached his 57th birthday. In his summary judgment declaration he alleges that in 1961 he exercised his option to become a state miscellaneous member because he intended to work until age 65; that classification provided the highest available retirement payment at that age; his enforced...
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