Maietta v. Town of Scarborough
2004 ME 97, 07/27/2004
ALEXANDER
Finding of discrimination vacated where hearing officer excluded arbitration decision as evidence and failed to make a finding on whether the employee's termination was substantially or significantly motivated by his filing of a compensation claim.
The Court addressed several issues in this wrongful termination case, including the hearing officer's status and the effect of an arbitration decision on this case. The employee was a Scarborough police officer who suffered from depression and stress-related conditions. After exhausting his authorized leave time, he told the employer he would be out indefinitely per doctor's orders.
Without waiting for this leave to be authorized, he went on vacation. Upon his return, the employer terminated him for excessive absenteeism. The employee filed a workers' compensation claim to remedy discrimination, as well as claim of unjustified termination under his union's collective bargaining agreement. An arbitration panel first found no wrongful termination under the CBA. This decision was then introduced into the workers' comp hearings as an offer of proof. The hearing officer, however, conceded to the employee's wish to exclude this as evidence upon which the decision was based. The hearing officer's term then ended in December 2002, before the hearings were completed.
Because the officer's reappointment status was uncertain, the parties entered into a "Contingent Arbitration Agreement" in April 2003, under which they agreed not to challenge the officer's status but to let him decide the case. The agreement provided that if the Board or an arbitrator determined that the officer had no such authority, the parties would consider him to have acted as an arbitrator and the case would be governed by arbitration rules under §314.
In June 2003, before his status was determined, the hearing officer issued a decision. He ruled that the claimed mental stress injury was not work-related, but at the same time, he granted the petition to remedy discrimination. Both parties requested further findings of fact and conclusions of law, which the hearing officer issued in September 2003. The officer found that the employer's termination was "taken in good faith"; nevertheless, it awarded the employee back wages and benefits from the date of termination until the town reemploys him. On the town's appeal, the Court vacated and remanded.
The Court first found that the hearing officer's status had not been determined at the time of the decision; thus, pursuant to the contingency agreement, he was to be considered a hearing officer and not an arbitrator in the case. Therefore, the appeal was timely, as it was filed under hearing rules allowing appeals within 20 days of the request for further findings, rather than under the arbitration section of the Act, which does not provide that such requests toll the statute.
The Court then vacated the granting of the petition to remedy discrimination, ruling that the hearing officer erroneously excluded the arbitration panel's decision as evidence and failed to make a finding on whether the employee's termination was substantially or significantly motivated by his filing of a compensation claim. Justice Alexander stated that hearing officers, like other administrative officers, work under broader rules of evidence than apply in court cases. Under these broader standards, relevant evidence is to be excluded only if it is repetitious or unreliable, and neither was the case with the arbitration panel's decision. Nor was the exclusion of this evidence harmless, as it spoke to the central issue of whether the employee's termination was justified.
Justice Alexander found that the hearing officer "compounded this error" by failing to determine, as required in wrongful termination cases, whether or not it was the employee's filing of a claim that motivated the employer to terminate him. The Court stated that an officer does not have to use any specific word, like "motivated," but must point out that the employee's assertion of a claim was the primary factor leading the employer to discipline or discharge the employee.
The hearing officer here found that the employee's supervisor knew that he was out of work due to a claimed work injury and, subsequently, the employer fired him. The officer failed to make findings, however, as to whether the employer was motivated by the employee's petition for benefits, his excessive absenteeism, or his unauthorized leave-taking.
On remand, the hearing officer was to include the evidence of the arbitration panel decision and make findings to support its ruling of discrimination by the employer.
Sanders v. Seaside Nursing Home
2004 ME 135, 11/03/2004
RUDMAN
Where work aggravated employee's preexisting, nonwork-related latex allergy for only two days before she returned to her baseline status, duration of disability was two days, and hearing officer erred in awarding ongoing benefits.
The Court vacated the hearing officer's award of ongoing incapacity benefits, where the employee's condition returned to its baseline that predated the injury.
The employee worked for various nursing and retirement homes since the 1990s. After suffering from an unspecified condition for a number of years, in 1997 she was conclusively diagnosed with an allergy to latex, a common product in such homes. After suffering a respiratory reaction to latex in a retirement home in 1997, she settled with the home's insurer for $60,000. She was then advised by an allergy specialist to work only in a latex-free environment. However, the employee resumed nursing after a failed business attempt.
In 2001, while working for another nursing home, the employee suffered an aggravation of her latex allergy. She received closed-end compensation benefits, until the aggravation ended and she returned to her baseline condition. In May, she began working for Seaside Nursing Home, where she was assigned to an area with reduced latex exposure. Nevertheless, on July 6, 2002, she suffered a latex exposure at work that aggravated her allergy symptoms.
She returned to work two days later, but Seaside sent her home until it could perform a workplace evaluation. Seaside's allergist consultant recommended that she not return to work until a carpet was replaced. As Seaside could not fully replace the carpet until January 2003, it sent the employee a letter dated, July 29, 2002, informing her that she was being terminated because Seaside could not hold open her job for that long. Subsequently, the employee worked for two other employers in August and October 2002 but left both jobs due to latex issues. She then began working for another nursing home in March 2003, where she was employed at the time of this case.
This case began when the employee filed petitions for award and to remedy discrimination regarding the July 6, 2002 exposure at Seaside. The hearing officer denied the petition for discrimination, which was not appealed. The officer also awarded ongoing partial benefits for the exacerbation of the employee's preexisting allergy. The employer appealed to the Law Court regarding the duration of benefits, as the hearing officer found that the aggravation lasted only two days before the employee returned to her baseline condition. The Law Court agreed with the employer that the hearing officer erred in finding more than two days of disability.
Justice Rudman first found that the employee's underlying latex allergy was not a work-related injury, specifically not a gradual injury as found in Derrig v. Fels Co. (747 A.2d 580, 1999). In Derrig, the employer had worked for various employers over a 20-year history as a pipe fitter. Over that time, he endured repeated injuries to his back at different employers. The Derrig Court concluded that if the employee's multiple injuries constituted one gradual injury, the hearing officer was to treat them as a single injury and not require the employee to establish liability by each employer.
In contrast to the employee's underlying back condition in Derrig, Justice Rudman found that the employee's latex allergy here was not work-related. Rather, the employee's work-related latex exposures aggravated an essentially nonwork-related condition. Therefore, benefits could only be awarded for the period in which she was symptomatic-or two days. After that, she returned to her baseline allergic condition, which was not work-related. The Court vacated and remanded for the hearing officer to award only two days of benefits.
