http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/reasonable+reliance
First, the Employment Retirement Service (ERS) personel's responsibility is to provide accurate retirement planning information. An employee seeking advice might not have advanced education to understand every aspect of ERS regulations. Imaging a city sanitation worker or an office secretary, who are over 60 years old, calling ERS personel to navigate the complex retirement system. ERS cannot give them incomplete information and then claim it is the employee's mistake for not knowing the rules.
A reasonable person would read the retirement policies and then confirm and verify his/her own understanding with a ERS representative. It is paramount that ERS personel give complete and accurate information to an employee seeking advice.
Therefore it cannot be the public policy that an employee has no redress when ERS personel did not inform an employee his/her full entitlement under ERS. If this was the case, ERS would have no incentive to improve its service to public employees. If the public employee cannot rely on ERS estimate, what else can they rely on when they try to make a decision to retire?
In this case, I have a written estimate from ERS that did not completely inform me of my retirement entitlement. Had ERS not provided this errornous estimate, I would have spent more time research ERS regulations. My reliance on ERS's estimate is reasonable, and it is the ERS's incomplete estimate that caused the delay of retirement and missing retirement payments.
