Court rules employer can’t zero out retired officer’s disability pay

Instead, the court turned to Connecticut’s wage calculation statute, which provides that when an employee has not been working in the period immediately before the onset of disability, benefits must be based on the prevailing wages for the same or similar employment in the same area. For Martinoli, that meant the going rate for Stamford police officers at the time he became disabled in 2015 – not his 1999 earnings, and certainly not zero. 

The defendants also sought a credit against a permanent partial impairment award for disability payments made after Martinoli reached maximum medical improvement in May 2016. The court declined to take up that question, finding it premature. The commissioner had already scheduled further hearings on credits, and the court noted significant gaps in the record, including uncertainty about what payments had actually been made. Martinoli died during the pendency of the appeal before the Connecticut Supreme Court, and Dawn Re, the administrator of his estate, was substituted as the plaintiff. 

For HR professionals – particularly those managing public-sector workforces – the takeaway is straightforward. Workers’ compensation claims can resurface years or even decades after an employee retires, and the benefits owed will not be pegged to some distant historical wage. They will reflect what the job pays now. That is a long-tail liability worth tracking, especially for municipalities and agencies employing police officers, firefighters, and other workers covered by heart and hypertension presumption laws that exist in numerous states across the country. 

Retirement, the court made clear, closes a career. It does not close a claim.