R.I. Firefighter Files $7M Claim Over Pension Suspension

April 21--PROVIDENCE -- John Sauro, the firefighter whose dislocated shoulder has been a cause celebre in the controversy over disability pensions for public-sector employees, has filed a claim against the city for financial damages.

The city Retirement Board four months ago suspended Sauro's $3,902-a-month pension after Sauro would not submit to a follow-up medical examination to confirm that he remains disabled from work.

In a claim submitted at City Hall on Friday, Sauro alleges that city officials singled him out for illegally unfair and discriminatory treatment.

He demanded $7 million in compensatory damages for, among other things, his medical expenses and the loss of his pension. He alleges that the city has deprived him of his constitutional rights, humiliated him and caused him anxiety, pain and suffering.

Since he left work, Sauro said he has contracted colorectal disease and lost weight and that his condition has been exacerbated by the city's harassment.

Municipalities often receive financial claims as precursors to lawsuits for incidents varying from damage to motor vehicles caused by potholes to fatalities. Officials sometimes will pay them in order to avoid litigation.

This claim states that it is a precursor to a federal lawsuit, includes a close-up photograph of Sauro's bare shoulder that shows a lump, to prove the dislocation. Sauro once allowed news reporters at City Hall to touch his shoulder through his clothing in order to feel the lump.

One of the unanswered questions in the long-running case has been why Sauro did not have surgery to fix his injury and whether surgery would have allowed him to return to duty.

His lawyers have said that the law does not require him to submit to surgery. For the first time, in the claim written by lawyer Joseph J. Voccola, Sauro offered a more detailed explanation: that he "was deemed not to be a candidate for corrective surgery."

But in an attempt to rehabilitate himself over the years, Sauro exercised, and he said in the claim that he managed to strengthen his shoulder despite the injury. His case was brought to light when Channel 12 WPRI broadcast an expose reporting that Sauro was following a strenuous weight-lifting regimen in a fitness center.

The news report instigated a criminal investigation of the possibility that Sauro was defrauding the pension system, but that came to naught. Mayor Angel Taveras deplored as "outrageous" the spectacle of Sauro lifting weights in the TV news video, despite his claimed disability.

Responding to the claim Saturday, Taveras said through a spokesman, "Mr. Sauro's claim is baseless, and my administration will vigorously defend the interests of Providence's taxpayers in this matter -- in court if necessary."

Sauro also alleges that two members of the Retirement Board publicly accused him of "fraud," that the city changed its retirement ordinance in an attempt to deny him his rightful pension, that the city embarked on a course of conduct that amounted to a "vicious assault" on his person and character, and that the pension suspension was retaliation for his resistance to the mistreatment.

The case dates to 1998, when Sauro contends that he suffered two on-the-job injuries, with the more serious injury being an "acromioclavicular joint separation and a focal through and through rotator cuff tear in the right shoulder while carrying a large individual down three flights of stairs."

The Retirement Board in 2000 issued Sauro an accidental-disability pension that entitles him to an annuity free of federal and state income taxes. And in 2011, he was required to undergo an exam by Dr. Anthony DeLuise Jr., an orthopedic shoulder specialist, to confirm that he remained disabled.

DeLuise confirmed Sauro's continuing disability for work as a firefighter, Sauro points out in his claim. The law applicable to Sauro only requires that an employee be 100-percent disabled from the job he or she was doing -- not whether the employee could do some other work -- and that the disabling injury or illness was job-related.

DeLuise suggested in writing that "a functional capacity test," which DeLuise did not administer, could show whether Sauro was capable of light duty or sedentary work. Officials questioned the thoroughness and reliability of the exam.

In 2013, Sauro again was instructed to undergo a follow-up medical exam, this time by an orthopedist in Waltham, Mass., who, like Taveras, was a mid-1990s alumnus of Georgetown University. But Sauro objected.

The retirement ordinance said such an exam must be made at a pension recipient's place of residence or "other place mutually agreed upon," and Sauro did not consent to travel to Massachusetts.

The mayor and council then amended the retirement ordinance to empower the city director of human resources to require pension recipients to undergo an exam by any physician selected by the city regardless of the physical location. Refusal would result in a suspension of the pension and, if the refusal persisted for one year, revocation.

The instruction to go to the Massachusetts orthopedist was then reiterated. And Sauro expressed suspicion that the city insist he see someone who must have known Taveras at Georgetown.

When Sauro's wife, Karen, informed the city that her husband could not attend the exam due to illness, Sauro alleged that the city set a trap by demanding that a physician's note be furnished immediately to document the illness.

John Sauro left his house on Sept. 13, 2013, to get the note; to gas up his car; to fax the note to the city; to fill a new prescription at a pharmacy; to visit his lawyer to discuss his situation; and then to get food, supposedly at a physician's instruction -- all with a private investigator hired by the city following him.

Sauro knew he was being trailed and, he said in his claim, suffered a panic attack the next day that caused him to be hospitalized.

Under orders by a psychiatrist and a psychologist not to travel to Massachusetts, according to Sauro, he did not go. After watching a video taken by the investigator, the Retirement Board suspended his pension.

In the claim, Sauro demands that the Massachusetts order be rescinded.

Copyright 2014 - The Providence Journal, R.I.