The First Department affirmed the denial of an administrative determination denying accidental disability retirement benefits to a former police officer, in Picciurro v. Police Pension Fund, which was decided on December 18, 2007.

Petitioner, now retired, took a one-day voluntary assignment at the World Trade Center-site on September 12, 2001. She alleges that the experience was so overwhelming that she was unable to return the next day, despite being ordered to do so. When she refused to return to the site, she allegedly was humiliated and handcuffed by her superior officer in front of her peers, who thereafter subjected her to taunting, causing her to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. This allegedly rendered her incapable of performing her duties and resulted in her application for accidental disability retirement (ADR).

Petitioner's application was considered on three separate occasions and, each time, was denied. The Appellate Division said that the trial court properly declined to annul that determination, citing Court of Appeals' decisions to the effect that a reviewing court may only disturb such finding if it determines that, as a matter of law,causation is established, that is, that the disability was the natural and proximate result of a line-of-duty accident. If the record contains any credible evidence of a lack of causation, said the court, the adverse determination must stand.

The court noted that, although petitioner asserts both her service on September 12, 2001, and her subsequent humiliation, harassment and taunting by co-workers were the line-of-duty accidents that caused her disability, the record contains statements by her indicating that she felt the latter to be more significant than the former. For example, before the Medical Board she stated, "It was at the scene of the World Trade Center when I was badly humiliated in front of the other officers by being handcuffed and from then on I was harassed . . . I was told that I shouldn't be an officer and that's my flashback. This is the one that bothers me the most. The officer who put the handcuffs on me ruined my life, that's why I cannot be a full-time police officer."

The court concluded that this theory of causation does not meet the definition of "accident" adopted by the Court of Appeals, namely, a sudden, fortuitous mischance, unexpected, out of the ordinary, and injurious in impact, and, therefore, it is insufficient to support her claim.