Zanetti v. City of Portland

A claim for disability benefits will be denied if a record contains substantial evidence of a person's informed discovery of duty-related post-traumatic stress disorder and has not been filed in a timely manner.

Petitioner, a Portland Police Officer, was denied disability benefits for duty-related post-traumatic stress disorder because he failed to timely file. Petitioner originally filed his claim in 2017, dropped the claim, and then filed again in 2020. The City of Portland’s Bureau of Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund denied the claim as untimely under ORS 656.807(1), which requires a claim to be filed within one year of the date the claimant becomes aware of the work-related cause of the mental disorder. The Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) upheld the denial, and the circuit court affirmed.

On appeal, Petitioner raised three assignments of error arguing that 1) OAH improperly retroactively applied the statute to the facts before the effective date of the new subsection; 2) that the finding of informed discovery was unsupported by substantial evidence; and 3) that the 2020 claim was a “new claim” rather than a renewal of the 2017 claim. The Court of Appeals rejected each argument, concluding that 1) the record contained substantial evidence of the officer’s informed discovery in 2017; 2) that the amended statute did not apply retroactively; and 3) that his claim was not “new.” The court AFFIRMED the trial court’s decision.