MONICA WILSON v. BOARD OF TRUSTEES POLICE AND FIREMEN'S RETIREMENT SYSTEM

 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-1146-06T21146-06T2

MONICA WILSON,

Appellant,

v.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE

POLICE AND FIREMEN'S RETIREMENT

SYSTEM,

Respondent.

________________________________________________________

 

Submitted September 25, 2007 - Decided

Before Judges Coburn and Grall.

On appeal from a Final Administrative

Decision of the Board of Trustees of the

Police & Firemen's Retirement System.

Fein, Such, Kahn & Shepard, attorneys

for appellant (Brian W. Kincaid, on the

brief).

Anne Milgram, Attorney General, attorney

for respondent (Lewis A. Scheindlin,

Assistant Attorney General, of counsel;

Dawn M. Harris, Deputy Attorney General,

on the brief).

PER CURIAM

Monica Wilson appeals from a final administrative decision issued by the Board of Trustees of the Police and Firemen's Retirement System on September 12, 2006, adopting the decision of an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), who had found that Wilson was not entitled to accidental disability retirement benefits.

Wilson's sole contention is that the final administrative decision is against the weight of the evidence. After carefully considering the record and briefs, we are satisfied that the decision is supported by sufficient credible evidence on the record as a whole, R. 2:11-3(e)(1)(D), and that Wilson's arguments to the contrary are without sufficient merit to warrant discussion in a written opinion. R. 2:11-3(e)(1)(E). Nonetheless, we add the following comments.

Assuming that all three accidents qualified as traumatic events, a somewhat doubtful proposition as to the first accident, which occurred on October 25, 2000, the case turned on a comparison of the credibility of Wilson and her expert, a non-treating physician, with the credibility of the physician selected by respondent. Although Wilson's brief suggests that the respondent's expert was less credible than her expert, she does not even discuss his opinion in detail in either her statement of facts or argument. The ALJ's description of the testimony is accurate, and it shows a classic disagreement between two experts, with some evidence supporting both; but in this case the weight of the evidence is on respondent's side. Given the narrow scope of our review, Gerba v. Board of Trustees of the Public Employees' Retirement System, 83 N.J. 174, 189 (1980), we are obliged to affirm.

Affirmed.

 

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A-1146-06T2

October 3, 2007