On January 30, 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal clarified which sorts of retirement benefit payments do and do not count as a “disability allowance” within the context of the reciprocity rules of the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 (CERL). Specifically, the court in Casson v. Orange County Employees Retirement System (2023 Cal. App. LEXIS 67) held that a service retirement benefit payment from one retirement plan does not count against the disability benefit payment a member may receive from a CERL plan if the member has not elected reciprocity between the plans. If, however, the member has elected reciprocity between the two plans, the CERL plan’s disability benefit must be offset by the service-based benefit payment.
The facts of Casson are straightforward. Nicholas Casson served as a city firefighter with a CalPERS participating employer for 27 years. In 2012, Casson retired from CalPERS for service, and immediately began a second career working in fire safety with the Orange County Fire Authority, thus becoming eligible for a second pension under the Orange County Employees Retirement System (OCERS), a CERL system. Casson did not elect reciprocity between CalPERS and OCERS. Instead, he immediately started collecting his CalPERS pension upon retirement from the city, and started over in OCERS when he began his second career as a county employee.
After five years of working for the county, Casson was injured on the job, and applied to OCERS for a...
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