Case Title: Bunnell v. Employment Div.

Citation: 304 Or. 11, 741 P.2d 887

Docket Number: 

State: oregon

Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Date: 1987-08-24T00:00:00Z

Document:
741 P.2d 887 (1987)
304 Or. 11
Paula J. BUNNELL, Petitioner On Review,
v.
EMPLOYMENT DIVISION, Respondent On Review.
EAB 86-AB-218; CA A39247; SC S33922.

Supreme Court of Oregon, In Banc.
Argued and Submitted July 8, 1987.
Decided August 24, 1987.
Suanne Lovendahl, Oregon Legal Services Corp., Roseburg, argued the cause and filed the petition for petitioner on review.
Jerome Lidz, Asst. Atty. Gen., Salem, argued the cause for respondent on review. With him on the response to the petition for review were Dave Frohnmayer, Atty. Gen., and Virginia L. Linder, Sol. Gen., Salem.
JONES, Justice.
Claimant petitioned this court to review a decision of the Court of Appeals, 84 Or. App. 428, 734 P.2d 14 (1987), sitting in banc, which affirmed without opinion, by an equally divided court, an order of the Employment Appeals Board (EAB) denying her claim for unemployment compensation benefits. The issue is whether the EAB correctly interpreted the language of an administrative rule.
The EAB adopted the factual findings and decision of the Employment Division hearings referee. The referee's findings of fact are set forth below:
ORS 657.176 establishes the grounds and procedures for disqualifying employes from the opportunity to receive unemployment insurance benefits. Subsection (2)(a) of that statute states that an individual is disqualified if the individual "has been discharged for misconduct connected with work." Pursuant to ORS 657.610(1), the Assistant Director of Employment promulgated administrative rule OAR 471-30-038(3), which defines such misconduct as follows:
In 1979, the assistant director promulgated this rule in an apparent attempt to capsulize the Court of Appeals' holdings as to what would constitute misconduct under ORS 657.176(2)(a). Judge Tanzer, dissenting in Lundy v. Employment Div., 34 Or. App. 265, 269-70, 578 P.2d 476 (1978), summed up those Court of Appeals cases as follows:
The assistant director apparently pulled separate sentences from those Court of Appeals opinions together in formulating the administrative rule without stating clearly whether every wilful violation of the standard of behavior which an employer has the right to expect is misconduct or whether an isolated act can be an isolated instance of poor judgment even though wilful.
The referee offered the following reasons for concluding that claimant was discharged for misconduct connected with her work:
ORS 183.470(2) provides that final agency orders in contested cases
ORS 183.482(8)(c) provides:
We do not quarrel that the referee and the EAB could reasonably conclude from these facts that claimant's conduct constituted a wilful violation of the standards of behavior her employer had a right to expect from her. But that does not end the inquiry. The question remains whether the rule's exclusions from the definition of misconduct, specifically, isolated instances of poor judgment, should apply.
In this case, the referee concluded that claimant's conduct was not excused as an "isolated instance of poor judgment," reasoning as follows:
The referee's statement is a non sequitur if the referee meant that he could infer from this verbal outburst that there had been previous similar outbursts and, therefore, her conduct was not an isolated instance of poor judgment. However, the referee may have meant that the nature of the outburst was much worse than poor judgment, even though it occurred only this one time. It is not surprising that the referee's findings are somewhat ambiguous. The ambiguity is generated by the ambiguity in OAR 471-30-038(3). As previously mentioned, the rule does not clearly say whether the two descriptions are mutually exclusive, i.e., whether every "wilful violation of the standard of behavior which an employer has the right to expect" is misconduct, or whether even a wilful violation *890 of a reasonable standard can be an isolated instance of poor judgment.
Here, the referee and the EAB apparently concluded that one instance of misconduct can constitute a wilful violation of the standards of behavior that an employer has the right to expect of an employe and can amount to a wilful disregard of an employer's interest. We agree that an isolated wilful act of an employe can amount to misconduct if more severe than poor judgment. However, the referee's and the EAB's conclusion in this case is not supported by the record. The findings demonstrate a classic example of an isolated instance of poor judgment which, without more, is not misconduct as defined by the agency's own rule, OAR 471-30-038(3).
The parties do not dispute that this claimant had never previously used vulgar language on the job, and the assistant manager involved in this incident admitted that claimant had done "everything I told [her] to do before that." It is also undisputed that immediately after the verbal outburst claimant proceeded to follow the order given to her by the assistant manager and that she promptly apologized to him, stating "Well, it's  it's not you Mr. B, it's this whole situation." The following day, with no further misconduct by claimant, the manager of the store fired her, telling her, "We no longer need your kind here" and ordered her never again to enter the store, threatening that she could be arrested for trespassing if she did.
In sum, the findings of fact by the referee in this case were inadequate to support his conclusion that this was not simply an isolated instance of poor judgment. Other than this isolated verbal outburst, followed by immediate job performance, there is nothing in this record to support the more serious finding of misconduct. The issue in this case is not whether the employer was entitled to discharge the employe, but rather whether a legally discharged employe is disqualified from unemployment compensation. There is no substantial evidence in the record "when viewed as a whole" that would permit the referee or the EAB to make a finding that claimant's act amounted to more than an isolated instance of poor judgment. We remand this case to the EAB to enter an order allowing unemployment benefits to claimant.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Employment Appeals Board for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.