A state appeals panel agreed a retired Burbank firefighter who pleaded guilty to federal sexual abuse charges cannot legally reclaim his pension benefits.
John Trapp filed a Cook County Circuit Court lawsuit against the Burbank Firefighters’ Pension Fund and its trustees, challenging a September 2022 benefits rescission ruling. Judge Joel Chupack rejected that claim, which Trapp challenged before the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
Justice Debra Walker wrote the panel’s opinion, filed May 8; Justices Bertina Lampkin and Rena Van Tine concurred.
Illinois First District Appellate Justice Debra Walker
| 2Civility
According to court records, Burbank Fire Chief David Gilgenberg placed Trapp, now 60, on administrative leave on Jan. 12, 2017, one day after receiving a report “of an inappropriate relationship” between the 28-year veteran and a 17-year-old girl who was a cadet with the department. Five days later, Trapp applied for retirement benefits.
In September 2017, the pension board granted Trapp regular benefits, but the federal government brought child pornography charges in December 2019; Trapp pleaded guilty in September 2020. The board did not conduct its hearing about how the conviction affected Trapp’s pension until July 2022.
After rejecting Trapp’s jurisdictional arguments, the board weighed the issue on its merits and determined the conviction was connected to Trapp’s service because he worked with the victim at the fire department when he enticed her to a motel for sex and later induced her to send him explicit photos and a video.
Before Judge Chupack, Trapp argued the pension board relinquished jurisdiction 35 days after the initial September 2017 ruling. On appeal, he restated that position and didn’t “challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the divestment of his pension,” according to Walker. He claimed the board knew of the underlying facts when it made its first decision.
Walker said Trapp’s appellate filing was “patently inadequate” as it contained no factual statements after the September 2017 pension ruling. While explaining the panel had the right to strike the appeal as insufficient, Walker said review was complicated but not impossible.
“We reject plaintiff’s characterization of the divestment hearing as an ‘appeal’ of the initial award,” Walker wrote. “There is nothing in the record before us indicating that the board was challenging the basis of its own initial award of plaintiff’s pension benefit application; to the contrary, it was a new action that the board brought based upon new information.”
Not only did the panel reject Trapp’s argument the pension board lacked jurisdiction, it said state law required the board to divest following his federal conviction “because it no longer had the power to pay that money” under a pension code clause that holds “none of the benefits provided under this article shall be paid to any person who is convicted of any felony relating to or arising out of or in connection with service as a firefighter.”
Trapp is represented by Scott Moran, of the Law Offices of Thomas W. Duda, of Palatine.
Representing the pension board and trustees are Reimer Dobrovolny & Labardi, of Hinsdale.
Burbank City Hall did not respond to a request for comment.