A 28-year firefighter's hearing loss claim leaves his county employer on the hook
Government employers cannot use partial disability retirement benefits to cancel out workers' compensation awards, a Maryland court ruled on March 2.
The decision, handed down by the Appellate Court of Maryland, draws a line that public sector HR and benefits teams cannot afford to ignore: the type of disability benefit an employer pays matters – and the difference can cost the organization money it thought it had already covered.
The case began with Joseph Dennie, a Montgomery County firefighter who spent twenty-eight years on the job. While still working through the process of retiring, he filed a workers' compensation claim in April 2018 for occupational hearing loss – a condition that developed over his career but only surfaced toward the end of his service. He was formally granted a service-connected partial disability retirement in June of that year. His retirement benefit was tied to a specific list of conditions – orthopedic injuries, hypertension, sleep apnea, among others – that his employer formally documented as the basis for his retirement.
The Maryland Workers' Compensation Commission sided with Dennie on the hearing loss claim, awarding him just over $4,700 in permanent partial disability benefits.
Montgomery County then tried to offset that award against the retirement benefits it was already paying Dennie, arguing that it should not have to pay twice. The strategy worked at...
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