Opinion ID: 1433395
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Debbie Miller

Text: Jackson Hospital argues that Miller's net award should have been offset by the amount of money she earned or was loaned from her trucking business. Jackson Hospital employed Miller as a phlebotomist until firing her in August 2000. She took interim employment with Central Kentucky Blood Center in January 2001, but voluntarily left that job in early 2002. She then got another job, this time with Appalachian Regional Healthcare, but left it to return to the Blood Center where she worked until it ceased operations in July 2004. Miller also owned a trucking company from 1997 until 2004 that she inherited from her mother-in-law while still employed by Jackson Hospital. Miller's company employed a few drivers and her primary responsibility was to write payroll checks. She shut the company down in 2004 because it was no longer profitable. From the beginning, however, Miller received a salary and took out loans from the company. Both parties agree that the Board's general rule is that, during the backpay period, earnings or profits from a job or business that a discriminatee held during her employment are not deductible from gross backpay as interim earnings. See Midwestern Pers. Servs., 346 N.L.R.B. 624, 635 n. 6 (2006). The Board here determined that this income should not be used to offset Miller's backpay award because, after her unlawful discharge, her duties with her company did not change and her hours of work did not increase or decrease. The ALJ agreed: Miller's testimony that she performed the same duties for the trucking company before and after her unlawful discharge is unrebutted. Jackson Hosp. Corp. 352 N.L.R.B. 33 (2008). The ALJ did find that, during the backpay period, Miller took out slightly more funds from her company than she previously and she put a slightly greater share of her company's assets to personal use, including loans. Jackson Hospital observes that we do not know whether she paid these loans back. Jackson Hospital thus argues that this extra money should be counted against her backpay award. And the ALJ elaborately construed this extra work as supplemental income or moonlighting, which, under Board precedent, does not offset a backpay award. See Birch Run Welding & Fabricating, Inc., 286 N.L.R.B. 1316, 1318 (1987). We see the matter differently than Jackson Hospital. Whatever money or unpaid loans Miller took from her company were not interim earnings because she was simply liquidating assets she already owned prior to her being fired. If someone had a large bank or retirement account and that person's unlawful firing forced them to liquidate a larger share of it to pay bills, we would not count that increase against a backpay award: it is not interim income of the kind earned when one finds new employment after having been unlawfully discharged. Because Miller's company's assets were limitedindeed, the company closedthe loans and income are irrelevant to her backpay and the rest of her job search. Thus, we enforce the Board's modified backpay award to Miller, though under somewhat different reasoning.