David Maiella, a police officer employed by the City of New Castle, Pennsylvania, from 2009 until June 2021, sought a disability retirement benefit under the City’s police pension plan after suffering a back injury in May 2019. Following the injury, Maiella was placed on leave and received benefits under Pennsylvania’s Heart and Lung Act until his separation from employment on June 16, 2021. As part of a separation agreement resolving the Heart and Lung benefits dispute, the parties agreed that Maiella could apply for a disability retirement pension under the City’s Police Pension Plan.
Maiella submitted a disability pension claim to the City of New Castle Police Pension Board in June 2021. The Board reviewed medical reports from three physicians and denied the claim in March 2022 without conducting a hearing. Under the terms of the Pension Plan, a claimant seeking review of such a denial must file a request for review within sixty days. The Pension Plan further provides that failure to request review within that time period constitutes a waiver of the claim.
Rather than immediately pursuing the Pension Plan’s internal appeal process, Maiella filed a grievance under the parties’ collective bargaining agreement. In the grievance, however, he expressly stated that he was not waiving his rights under the Pension Plan and that, if an arbitrator determined the grievance was not arbitrable under the CBA, he would pursue the Pension Plan’s appeal procedures at that time.
The City objected to the grievance as non-arbitrable, arguing that the Pension Plan was not incorporated into the CBA. Although the City argued that the dispute belonged in the Pension Plan’s administrative process, it did not object to Maiella’s statement reserving his right to pursue the Pension Plan’s appeal procedures.
In November 2022, an arbitrator ruled that the dispute over the denial of a disability pension was not substantively arbitrable under the CBA. Shortly thereafter, in December 2022, Maiella filed an appeal with the Pension Board seeking review of the March 2022 denial of his disability claim. The City rejected that appeal as untimely under the Pension Plan’s sixty-day deadline.
Maiella filed a statutory appeal in the Court of Common Pleas of Lawrence County. The trial court held that Maiella’s claim/appeal under the Pension Plan’s procedure should be treated as timely and allowed Maiella to proceed on the merits of his disability claim. The trial court then reached the merits of the claim and ultimately reversed the Pension Board’s denial of benefits after considering additional medical evidence.
On appeal, the Commonwealth Court agreed with the trial court that Maiella’s claim under the Pension Plan was timely. The Court reasoned that by objecting to arbitration but remaining silent about Maiella’s express reservation of his pension appeal rights, the City “tacitly accepted that he was putting the procedure under the Pension Plan on hold pending the outcome of the arbitration,” thereby “lulling him into a false sense of security” that he was not forfeiting his claim. Under those circumstances, the City was estopped from denying the timeliness of Maiella’s subsequent commencement of a claim under the Pension Plan.
The Commonwealth Court nevertheless held that the trial court erred by deciding the merits of the disability claim itself. The Pension Plan required the Pension Board to conduct a “full and fair review” of an appealed claim denial, including evaluation of medical evidence and written submissions. Because the Board rejected Maiella’s appeal as untimely, it never performed that review.
The Commonwealth Court therefore but vacated the trial court’s ruling on the merits of the disability claim and remanded the case with instructions that the Pension Board conduct a hearing and decide the appeal under the procedures set forth in the Pension Plan.
Maiella v. City of New Castle, PA, No. 995 C.D. 2024, 2026 WL 143111 (Pa. Commw. Ct. Jan. 20, 2026) (unreported).