Court Opinion

ID: 9600618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:28:50.518922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:35.599093
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
The author of the Court’s opinion issued today has heretofore indicated rather strongly that a decision of the Industrial Commission borders on the sacrosanct, and sometimes the other members of the Court have been persuaded to agree with him. For my own part, however, I will only agree to the extent that the findings of fact of the Commission, when properly substantiated, should not be interfered with. But, on the other hand, with reference especially to appeals from the Department of Employment, where the decision is very often, as here, a mixed question of law and fact, I do not readily succumb to the philosophy of today’s author, as is rather well documented in my separate opinion in Comegys v. Air National Guard, Idaho, 663 P.2d 648 (1983) (now pending on rehearing). Although a rule that this Court would be bound by the determination of the Commission when the issue presented is a mixed question of law and fact might be good for the sake of *28administration, this Court has rejected such a rule. See Woodhams v. Ore-Ida Foods, Inc., 101 Idaho 369, 371, 613 P.2d 380, 382 (1980) (Bistline, J., dissenting, noting that in Johns v. S.H. Kress & Co., 78 Idaho 544, 307 P.2d 217 (1957), the Court took unto itself the power to reverse determinations of the Commission when the issue presented is a mixed question of law and fact).
Now, with regard to the case of Richard Roll, I would be among the first to concede that the employer here, and ordinarily any employer, has the right to discharge an employee who is tardy for work on a frequent basis and whose job performance is not acceptable to the employer. But, as in Comegys, and as in Wroble v. Bonners Ferry Ranger Station, 97 Idaho 900, 556 P.2d 859 (1976), how such amounts to misconduct within the provisions of the employer security law, I am wholly unable to see. The issue presented being one of a mixed question of law and fact, I respectfully dissent.