A state appeals panel told a retired Cook County employee she can’t lead a class action over being denied the right to purchase health insurance through the county’s retiree plan.
In October 2016, the Retirement Board of the County Employees’ and Officers’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Cook County told Lori Levin she couldn’t buy into its retiree plan because her last employer was the state, not the county. Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell affirmed the board’s decision, which Levin challenged before the First District Appellate Court.
The appeals panel determined the pension board exceeded its authority by implementing a last-employer rule and remanded her complaint with directions for an order granting Levin’s request. The board appealed that ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court, which dismissed the appeal in July 2020. Later that month the board granted Levin’s request for health insurance and gave her $63,984, “representing the calculated share of costs subsidized by the fund retroactive to the date she originally applied.”
Illinois First District Appellate Court Sheldon A. "Shelly" Harris
| harrisforjustice.com
In August 2020, Levin asked the circuit court to certify a class of annuitants, notify them of their ability to buy insurance and award her damages and legal fees of almost $533,000.
Judge Mitchell granted the board’s motion to strike Levin’s class request and dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. Levin again appealed to the First District, arguing Mitchell erred because the Supreme Court and appellate panel opinions revested him with jurisdiction until the case concludes, even though the appeals panel remanded to the pension board.
Justice Sheldon Harris wrote the opinion on that appeal, issued May 20; Justices Daniel Pierce and Mary Mikva concurred.
“Our mandate in the initial appeal reversed the board’s decision and remanded the case to the board with a direction to enter an order granting Levin insurance coverage under the Fund,” Harris wrote. “While our mandate was filed in the circuit court, we did not remand the case to that court or direct it to do anything. Moreover, in reversing the board’s decision, we implicitly reversed the court’s affirmance of the board’s decision.”
The panel said the Supreme Court’s order effectively affirmed its reversal of the orders from the pension board and from Judge Mitchell, and further clarified the orders of both bodies reversed Mitchell’s decision without sending it back to him, thus he could not be revested with jurisdiction.
Unlike other instances in which a circuit court has been given jurisdiction through a remand or reversal process, the panel said, “our decision was a final disposition of Levin’s substantive rights, finding her entitled to insurance coverage under the Fund and remanding to the board for the ministerial entry of an order to that effect.”
Had the appeals panel sent the case back to the pension board for additional fact finding or a decision that might require additional circuit court review, the panel explained, Levin might have a winning argument. That’s what happened in a 2009 Illinois Third District Appellate Court opinion in Jelinek v. Retirement Board of Firemen’s Annuity & Benefit Fund.
“The Jelinek court explained that the ‘finality of an order which remands an action to the agency turns on the substance of the instructions,’ ” Harris wrote.
The panel affirmed Mitchell’s ruling, ending Levin’s litigation.
Levin was represented by attorneys Clinton A. Krislov and Christopher M. Hack, of the firm of Krislov & Associates, of Chicago.
Representing the pension board were Mary Patricia Burns, Vincent D. Pinelli and Sarah A. Boeckman, of Burke Burns & Pinelli, of Chicago.