Dispatcher Loses Disability Appeal

A former Brockton (Mass.) police dispatcher has lost her appeal of a retirment board’s decision that her accidental fall in 2002 wasn’t job related. According to court documents, Teresa Damiano stood up from her console with the intention of going to the bathroom and then to a supply room to pick up more call slip forms. As she stood up, an officer approached from behind and, “in an ill-advised attempt at horseplay,” the court noted, put her in a headlock. Damiano injured her wrist and elbow when the two fell onto the floor, and she never returned to work. The city’s Retirement Board ruled the injury did not occur “while in the performance of her duties,” an appeal board upheldl that ruling. Now the state court upholds both decisions. Download (pdf) a copy of the court’s decision here.