Opinion ID: 2551330
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: AT & T's right to an impartial tribunal

Text: Due process gives a party the right to have an impartial tribunal hear the party's case. [45] AT & T contends that the hearing officer in this case was biased because he had been elected to an officer position in the Alaska Chapter of the AFL-CIO the summer before the hearing. It argues that AS 23.30.005(a) and (e) require that a workers' compensation hearing panel be balanced, and that the panel here did not meet this requirement. It also asserts that the hearing officer should have disqualified himself under AS 44.62.450(c), one of the provisions of the Alaska Administrative Procedure Act. [46] Finally, it contends that the hearing officer's conduct violated the Alaska Code of Judicial Conduct.
Administrative agency personnel are presumed to be honest and impartial until a party shows actual bias or prejudgment. [47] To show hearing officer bias, a party must show that the hearing officer had a predisposition to find against a party or that the hearing officer interfered with the orderly presentation of the evidence. [48] We conclude that the hearing officer's position as an AFL-CIO vice president is insufficient to show actual or probable bias on its own. Although the chair ruled against AT & T on some procedural questions, that alone is not sufficient to show a predisposition to find against AT & T. AT & T has made no showing that the hearing officer prejudged any facts in this case or was motivated by actual bias in ruling on procedural issues.
AT & T alleges that the hearing panel violated the statutory requirement of a balanced hearing panel because the chair's union activities upset the balance in the panel's composition. The workers' compensation act provides for panels of three members: a representative of labor, a representative of industry, and the commissioner of labor or the designated representative of the commissioner. [49] The applicable statute does not say that the panel must be neutral, nor does it restrict in any way whom the commissioner can appoint as his representative. There is no indication that the chair (the commissioner's designee) was acting as a second representative of labor or in a non-neutral capacity. We are unconvinced that his ancillary union position unbalanced the panel.
AT & T argues at length that the hearing officer violated the Alaska Code of Judicial Conduct but does not address the threshold issue of the code's applicability to workers' compensation hearing officers. It relies on one 1988 board ethics bulletin that looked to the Code of Judicial Conduct for guidance on the issue of giving references. Louisiana Pacific Corp. v. Koons, cited by AT & T to support its argument, deals with a hearing officer's ex parte communications, which are explicitly prohibited by the Alaska Administrative Procedure Act, and says nothing about the Code of Judicial Conduct. [50] Because AT & T has not adequately briefed the issue of the applicability of the Code of Judicial Conduct to workers' compensation hearing officers, we will not consider it. [51] Nor will we consider any claim that the hearing officer's conduct violated the Administrative Procedure Act's provision regarding disqualification of hearing officers. [52] We do not believe that the hearing officer's position as a union officer violated the code in any event. While the Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits judges from serving as officers of organizations that are likely to be engaged in proceedings that come before the judge, [53] unions are not generally parties before the workers' compensation board, even though their individual members may come before the board. Hearing officers in the workers' compensation division are members of the Alaska State Employee's Association, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Because the hearing officer's position as a union officer seems to have arisen directly out of his employment for the state, AT & T's argument could potentially disqualify all hearing officers.