Illinois Court Reverses Pension Board and Awards Firefighter Disability Pension

The Illinois Second District Appellate Court has reversed a pension board ruling that denied a disabled firefighter a disability pension.

Lieutenant Gabriel Scepurek had been a firefighter/paramedic for the Village of Northbrook Fire Department for over 20 years. On May 25, 2010, he injured his back while doing CPR. Every doctor that examined Lt. Scepurek reached the same conclusion: he was permanently disabled as a direct result of the injuries he sustained on May 25, 2010.

On April 10, 2012, the Board of Trustees of the Northbrook Firefighters’ Pension Fund denied his application for a duty related disability pension concluding that while Lt. Scepurek’s disability was in fact permanent it “was not in any way caused by any activity performed by him on the job”.

Lt. Scepurek filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court to challenge the pension board’s ruling. The trail judge affirmed the pension board’s denial on the grounds that under Illinois law “The [pension] Board’s findings of fact are considered prima facie true and are not to be overturned unless they are against the manifest weight of the evidence.” Lt. Scepurek appealed.

The Appellate Court acknowledged that while usually the pension board’s ruling is not to be overturned, this case is one of those cases where the board clearly went against “the manifest weight of evidence”.

• This case is not one where the medical evidence was inconclusive or where only a majority of physicians supported plaintiff’s disability pension application.
• The Board appears to have improperly disregarded the opinions of all the physicians who presented medical evidence and all documentary medical evidence and rendered its own medical opinion as to whether plaintiff’s permanent disability was a result of his on-the-job injury.
• The Board’s decision substituted its lay assumptions and engaged in conjecture in making its determination that plaintiff’s permanent disability was caused solely by degenerative changes in his lumbar spine, rather than carefully evaluating the conclusions of each of the doctors who opined that plaintiff’s disability was the result, at least in part, of an on-the-job injury.
• If the Board’s decision were allowed to stand, then no older firefighter/paramedic who has degenerative changes in his/her skeletal system (that the physicians testified all older people have) would be able to establish an on-the-job injury.
• While credibility determinations are generally within the province of the Board, the Board cannot piecemeal tear apart a plaintiff’s credibility on one issue while finding him credible on all other issues when plaintiff’s same statements are supported by documentary evidence and are found credible by all medical personnel as in this case. This appears to be a case where plaintiff’s testimony as to the onset of his disability from the injury he experienced while working and the permanency of his disability are inextricably intertwined.
• The Board’s reliance, in part, on plaintiff’s testimony and all medical evidence to find plaintiff permanently disabled, but then to find plaintiff incredible based merely on his courtroom demeanor, without additionally finding significant contradictions and/or inconsistencies in his testimony as it related to the medical evidence presented, supports the conclusion that the Board’s decision is against the manifest weight of the evidence.
• Under the facts of this case, this court finds that the plaintiff’s back was injured on May 25, 2010 and that the Board’s decision that this injury played no role whatsoever in his current permanent disability from back problems was contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence.

Here is a copy of the ruling. Scepurek v Northbrook