Opinion ID: 2324757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: The underlying conduct.

Text: The evidence shows, beyond dispute, that Ms. Okyiri received the letter from Bert Smith & Company in late December 1992. From the DCPL's reasonable perspective, as reflected in Mr. Molumby's communication to Ms. Okyiri initiating the adverse action, this letter was not a minor communication regarding, say, the failure to order some stationery on time. Rather, the letter concerned allegations of unlawful expenditure of federal funds, as well as the possibility that the DCPL would have to reimburse the federal government. These subjects were central to Ms. Okyiri's area of responsibility and potentially implicated the kind of fiscal mismanagement that she claimed to be determined to uproot. Moreover, Ms. Okyiri was not an untrained clerical employee, but the DCPL's chief financial officer. Nevertheless, she permitted the letter to lie in her in-box, unopened, for more than two months. The ALJ concluded that Ms. Okyiri had no obligation to deliver the envelope to Dr. Franklin. According to the OEA, Ms. Okyiri was not obliged to pass the envelope on to the Director because she had reason to believe that he already had the original and that she only had a copy. With due respect to the authors of these opinions, we find this reasoning unpersuasive. Indeed, in our view, the ALJ and the OEA construed the allegations against Ms. Okyiri unduly narrowly and therefore missed the main thrust of the charge. Ms. Okyiri's failure to pass on the information to Dr. Franklin was a product of her failure to open the envelope for so extensive a period of time. Had she taken the elementary step of reading her mail, she would immediately have noticed that the envelope contained the original of a letter addressed to her, and not a copy of a letter to Dr. Franklin. Ms. Okyiri's purportedly reasonable belief that she had received only a copy of a communication to her superiors was induced by her own inexplicable failure to open her mail, or even to know what was in her in-box. The allegedly reasonable mistaken impression on which Ms. Okyiri relies was thus the product of her failure to do her job. In Garrett v. Mathews, 474 F.Supp. 594 (N.D.Ala.1979), Bert D. Garrett, a professor at the University of Alabama, challenged the revocation of his tenure. The evidence showed, inter alia, that Garrett had been ordered by the chairman of his department to supply a list of publications. Garrett had failed to provide that list, and he had not opened relevant mail from the chairman. A hearing committee found that Garrett's failure to provide the list constituted insubordination and dereliction of duty. Id. at 599. The court continued: Plaintiff's failure to open the mail from his superior was even a more odious indiscretion. Though, as plaintiff alleges, supplying a list of publications and opening mail may be nowhere written as job requirements, the court notes that not showing up for class naked is not a written job requirement either. Some things go without saying. Complying with reasonable requests from superiors and opening mail from superiors are among them. These offenses clearly could be such insubordination and dereliction of duty as to indicate dismissal. Id. We recognize that not every negligent act or omission on the part of an employee warrants removal, and that the OEA's (and our) review of the exercise of managerial discretion, though deferential, must be meaningful. We believe that Justice Musmanno's eloquent language in In re Shoaf, 370 Pa. 567, 88 A.2d 871 (1952), albeit written in the somewhat different context of a proposed recall of elected officials, is instructive. People demand of their representatives government which is efficient and in meticulous keeping with the highest standards of devotion to their interests. But they are not prepared to dismiss their public officials simply because they do not achieve perfection in every minute detail of bureaucratic operation. Id. at 873. But the DCPL could reasonably view Ms. Okyiri's conduct with respect to the Bert Smith & Company envelope as far more than a failure to achieve perfection in every minute detail of bureaucratic operation. Id. In our view, the facts here are quite similar to those in Garrett. Ms. Okyiri, like Professor Garrett, failed to open important mail, with potentially disastrous results. To quote Mr. Molumby (who described himself as having been rendered speechless by Ms. Okyiri's inaction), Ms. Okyiri knew we needed the information. She had the information. She had it for two and a half months. And she didn't give it to us. Recognizing that the burden of persuasion was on the DCPL, see Parsons, supra, 228 U.S.App. D.C. at 4, 707 F.2d at 1409, we conclude that the ALJ, the OEA, and the trial judge erred as a matter of law in holding that the undisputed facts did not establish a grave breach of duty on Ms. Okyiri's part. [23] As a matter of managerial discretion, the DCPL could reasonably treat such a breach of duty as inexcusable.