Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Officers fired due to insurance expense, not comp claims: Court

Reprints
corrections officer

A group of Massachusetts correctional officers on leave who were terminated due to the unfunded cost of their group health insurance failed to show they were discriminated against because they filed workers compensation claims, an appellate court ruled.

The Massachusetts Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed a superior court judge’s ruling in Mattar v. Cabral that the workers were fired in good faith, not because they were on disability leave.

In 2010, the administration of Suffolk County’s sheriff’s department was moved to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with health insurance also moving under the state umbrella.

After the transfer, the department was charged the cost of insuring workers who were on leave for more than a year. The department learned that the estimated insurance charge for 12 employees who had been on leave and receiving workers compensation for more than one year was about $140,000.

The department terminated those workers on leave to avoid future costs, according to court documents. At the time, one employee had returned to work, nine others were approved for accidental disability retirement, and two had applications pending.  

In October 2013, the former workers filed a complaint alleging that they were terminated in retaliation for filing workers compensation claims.

A superior court judge dismissed the complaint and the appellate court affirmed the ruling, holding that a “good faith administrative determination of lack of funds” was a valid basis for the termination of their employment. The appellate court noted that the workers had claimed and received workers comp for at least a year before their termination, and that “no reasonable trier of fact could find that the department terminated the plaintiffs in retaliation for collecting workers compensation benefits.”