Court affirms denial of benefits for cop with COVID

The Philadelphia Police Department does not owe benefits or penalties for terminating benefits it was paying to a police officer who missed more than a year of work because of COVID-19, according to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

In a ruling issued Jan. 17, the court said Jaime Brown failed to prove that the excused time benefits the department paid him while he was off work were a stand-in for workers compensation benefits. The court also said Mr. Brown failed to prove that he gave the department proper notice of his claim or that it violated any rules or regulations that would subject it to penalties, according to Jaime Brown v. City of Philadelphia (WCAB).

Mr. Brown suffered a physical injury that prevented him from working for some amount of time in 2020. He returned to work on restricted duty Nov. 3, 2020. He says he experienced COVID-19 symptoms and was later diagnosed with the disease. He was off work from Nov. 4, 2020, through April 1, 2022.

From Nov. 4, 2020, through March 5, 2022, the department paid his full salary through an “excused time.” Although Mr. Brown never filed a report of injury, the department in January 2022 issued a notice of denial of liability for the alleged COVID-19 exposure claim.

A workers compensation judge in 2023 found the employer’s use of excused time didn’t constitute payment of wages in lieu of workers comp benefits and because the employer proved it did not intend for the excused time to be interpreted as an agreement to provide work comp benefits, the termination of the excused time payments was not a unilateral discontinuation of work comp benefits.

The Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board affirmed in April 2024.

The Commonwealth Court agreed that the department did not intend for the excused time payments to act as a stand-in for work comp benefits. City officials testified that excused time was an administrative tool used to pay workers their full salary when they missed work for any reason and that it was not related to disability leave. A lieutenant testified that all officers who missed work because of COVID-19 were paid through excused time regardless of whether the exposure was work-related.

The court said evidence on the record establishes that excused time was not an acknowledgment that Mr. Brown contracted COVID-19 through employment. The Commonwealth Court also affirmed the finding that Mr. Brown never provided proper notice of his injury.

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