Opinion ID: 1333685
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Firsthand testimony:

Text: (1) Albert U. Hardison, principal, supervises a staff of almost eighty, with forty-one teaching positions. He testified that one morning near the beginning of the 1980-81 school year, as he was talking to plaintiff in the corridor outside his office, he detected what he believed to be the smell of alcohol on Faulkner's breath. He continued: I talked with Mister Faulkner about it, expressed to him that I believed that I had smelled alcohol on his breath, and that I knew that he must know and understand, and recognize, the seriousness of this, and the consequences of it. Regarding this encounter with plaintiff, Hardison later testified: [I]f anyone had made the statement to me that I made to Mister Faulkner, that I would have considered it a warning.... I intended my message to him to be that, `I smelled alcohol on your breath'; that `This is going to cause a great deal of problems if this sort of thing persists.' Hardison said that just after this incident, he asked Mrs. Marie Satz, a counsellor at the school, to talk with plaintiff about this conduct. (2) Frances M. Motley, mother of a student of Mr. Faulkner's, testified that on the Thursday before Labor Day 1981, at 2:30 p.m., the end of the school day, she went to see plaintiff to pick up her son's assignments. Right from the beginning of their three or four minute meeting, she thought she recognized the odor of alcohol on Mr. Faulkner's breath. She was concerned and discussed it at home that night with her husband. They did not mention the incident to their son Phillip. (3) Margie Crawley Rice, a faculty member, testified that at the beginning of the 1981-82 school year at a teachers' workday, prior to the students coming to school, she came in contact with plaintiff and smelled liquor on his breath. Then, once or twice, at leastmaybe twice; not any more, she recognized the odor of alcohol on his breath in the morning, prior to the tardy bell, after the students arrived to begin classes.