The widow of a Chicago police officer can’t qualify for a supplement to her husband’s disability pension, as a state appeals panel has affirmed a lower court’s ruling the officer died three years after his age permanently “retired” him from the force and converted his benefit structure.
Ruben Salcedo was on duty in September 2008 when he suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of being ejected from his vehicle during a high-speed car crash. In January 2011, the Retirement Board of the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund awarded him a duty disability pension until 2015, when he turned 63, the Chicago Police Department’s mandatory retirement age. After that, he would receive a “life annuity.”
In 2021, more than two years after Salcedo died, Maria Salcedo filed for a widow’s compensation annuity benefit. The Board denied that claim, finding Maria ineligible because Ruben exceeded the mandatory retirement age. Cook County Judge Alison Conlon denied Maria Salcedo’s appeal of the final administrative decision, prompting her to challenge the issue before the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
Justice Cynthia Cobbs wrote the panel’s opinion, issued March 31; Justices Nathaniel Howse and David Ellis concurred.
The panel said the operative phrase in the Illinois Pension Code that created the Chicago fund dictates: “A disabled police officer may receive a duty disability benefit ‘until the policeman becomes age 63 or would have been retired by operation of law, whichever is later,’ ” Cobbs wrote. “A widow is not entitled to either a compensation or supplemental annuity unless ‘the death of the policeman was a direct result of the injury, or the injury was of such character as to prevent him from subsequently resuming service as a policeman.’ ”
Court records show Salcedo’s July 2018 death resulted from “gastrointestinal hemorrhage, esophageal varices and decompensated cirrhosis.” The Board approved the monthly lifetime annuity for Maria in September 2018.
On appeal, Salcedo argued Judge Conlon erred by failing to analyze whether the pension board adequately addressed if her husband’s on-duty injury caused a permanent disability. The Board disagreed, Cobbs wrote, contending Conlon “reviewed ‘unique facts’ when analyzing the pertinent parts of the Code, such as Salcedo’s receipt of duty disability benefits until his retirement, that his disability benefits converted into a retirement annuity thereafter, and that he passed away at age 65 for unrelated medical reasons. The Board asserts that, even if the facts are undisputed, it nevertheless took in evidence and did not simply interpret the Code purely on its language.”
Although the panel agreed with Salcedo that its role was to review the entire issue through the perspective of the underlying dispute — determining the Board didn’t consider if she’d offered sufficient evidence concerning her eligibility for a supplemental annuity — Cobbs wrote “we would reach the same conclusion in this case regardless.”
The panel said all parties overlooked, as a threshold issue, the distinction between compensation and supplemental annuities. Even a compensation annuity, given to a survivor when a spouse dies before retirement age, terminates whenever that officer would’ve reached age 63, after which a supplemental annuity is payable.
Salcedo didn’t show she ever received a compensation annuity, Cobbs wrote, and specifically applied for just that, up until her attorney stated in opening remarks before the Board the intent to seek a supplemental annuity and the parties continued to proceed as if that were the case.
“If in fact plaintiff was solely seeking a supplemental annuity,” Cobbs wrote, “then it appears that her claim should have been denied at the outset and prior to any determination that the retirement age precluded entitlement to such a benefit.”
Even so, the panel continued, Salcedo’s appeal failed on its own merits because the issue of the retirement age — enacted in 1963 — and deaths outside the line of duty had been resolved in a 2001 state appellate opinion involving the same police pension board. That case, Swoope v. Retirement Board of the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund, established “the legislature clearly intended only widows whose husbands died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the performance of acts of duty to benefit from compensation and supplemental annuities.”
The section under which Salcedo sought relief, the panel explained, quoting Swoope, was a slim expansion “allowing widows of officers whose injuries were of such character as to prevent them from subsequently resuming service as policemen to also receive this extra compensation.”
But there is no automatic entitlement to a compensation annuity, Cobbs wrote, meaning a widow has to prove the death directly stemmed from an act-of-duty death or that the injury prevented ever returning to work. And the Swoope plaintiff’s husband died before reaching retirement age, so the issue was a compensation annuity, not supplemental. Ultimately, the panel’s decision rested on a reading of state law.
Salcedo “did not file her request for benefits until 2021, about three years after her husband’s death,” Cobbs wrote. “There is no dispute that the weight of the medical evidence showed that Salcedo was either permanently disabled, still disabled or, at best, in a position to return to light desk duty. But following Salcedo’s retirement, there do not appear to be any medical reports or records in evidence that discussed Salcedo’s condition after his retirement. It is true that plaintiff provided affidavits to support her contention that Salcedo’s condition had been the same as when he had retired, but even those affidavits relied on medical reports and evaluations conducted prior to Salcedo reaching age 63. Thus, in the most extreme circumstances, and under plaintiff’s interpretation of the Code, the Board would be required to assess a request for a supplemental annuity based on potentially numerous years of missing medical records, where its appointed expert physician would be only able to make determinations based on their review of other doctors’ conclusions, as was done here. We do not believe that this could have been the legislature’s intent, based on its requirement of yearly medical examinations for receipt of disability payments, in tandem with the Code’s heavy emphasis on the age of 63 as the determining factor as to what amount and when an officer’s widow could be eligible for a compensation or supplemental annuity.”
If a widow never collects a compensation annuity, the panel concluded, she can’t be eligible for a supplemental annuity. Because it reached a conclusion on a threshold basis, Cobbs said, the panel didn’t need to consider whether Salcedo’s duty-related injuries permanently prevented a return to police work.
Michael Rothmann, of Law Office of Martin L. Glink, Arlington Heights, represented Salcedo.
The Board is represented by Reimer Dobrovolny & Labardi, of Hinsdale.