Opinion ID: 5904
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Robert Turner's Testimony

Text: In his testimony at the hearing, Cal-Maine's shipping and receiving supervisor, Robert Turner, flatly denied that outside eggs had been received at Edwards after April 1, 1988. The ALJ noted, however, that Turner also stated that the packing plant received outside eggs until around the time that a certain record-keeping change was made, in November 1988. Furthermore, when asked about Cal-Maine's policy of removing out-dated dolly stickers by employees, Turner replied: I don't have a lot of time to go pulling stickers off of 28 dollies or eight dollies or whatever is on the load. If it is an outside load, yo u would have at least 43 or 45 dollies on there. According to undisputed evidence, loads of 43 or 45 dollies necessarily would be from outside of the Edwards plant, delivered on eighteen-wheeler trucks, as opposed to the smaller vehicles used to make internal shipments of eggs within the Edwards complex. The ALJ found that Turner's present-tense statement was in effect an admission that the Edwards plant had recently been receiving outside shipments of eggs. Cal-Maine argues that the ALJ misinterpreted Turner's statements which the ALJ considered to be evidence that the Edwards plant was in fact receiving outside shipments after April 1, 1988. We have examined Turner's statements in context and agree that they are by no means conclusive admissions by him that the Edwards plant continued to receive outside shipments after April 1, 1988. At the same time, however, we do not agree with Cal-Maine that Turner's statements have no probative value. In particular, his use of the present tense in his statements about twenty-eight, forty-three, and forty-five dollies raises a legitimate question about whether such outside shipments were still being received around the time of the 1989 hearing. Again, we note that such evidence by itself is not sufficient to support the ALJ and NLRB's findings. However, it is probative evidence that was properly considered by the NLRB along with other evidence.