Court Opinion

ID: 9618712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:16:09.910322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:34:46.456951
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Today we revisit Booth v. City of Burley, 99 Idaho 229, 580 P.2d 75 (1978). There claimant was denied benefits on the basis that the Industrial Commission had concluded that claimant’s actions were violations of employment rules showing an intentional disregard of the employer’s interests, notwithstanding a close-coupled dissent which exposed the full text of the Commission’s conclusions, with the key word “intentional” singularly among the missing. Cf. Wroble v. Bonners Ferry Ranger Station, 97 Idaho 900, 556 P.2d 859 (1976). Nevertheless, Booth accomplished the restricting of this Court’s interference with Commission determinations which were other than pure law. We also revisit Jenkins v. Agri-Lines Corp., 100 Idaho 549, 602 P.2d 47 (1979). There claimant was denied benefits because of this Court’s conclusion that his actions fell into the definition of “misconduct,” I.C. § 72-1366(e), which an earlier Court defined in Johns v. S. H. Kress & Co., 78 Idaho 544, 307 P.2d 217 (1957), notwithstanding that the Johns case was in need of re-examination. The Court-supplied definition of a word of common understanding has over the years served no purpose other than a prop which the Court, as in Johns, can use at will in order to sustain result-oriented opinions.
Thus Johns has served well as a magic talisman, but not ever to the benefit of the *662claimant. Here, as in Johns, the Commission unanimously concluded that the claimant’s actions did not constitute misconduct so as to destroy a right to the benefits intended to be made available by the employment security law. That should have been the end of it. By applying the talisman, however, and only by applying it the Court is able to reverse the Commission. Its authority for doing so is said to lie in the proposition that the Commission erroneously interpreted the Court’s definition of misconduct. In turn the Court itself plays further with the Johns definition, and keys in on that part thereof which is said to make it only the subjective state of mind of the employer (not the employee at all) which must be taken into account. I am reminded of the language of Justice Bakes in Wroble : “It is manifest that the legislature did not intend that misconduct such as would bar recovery of benefits under the law would be defined by the employer.” Wroble, 97 Idaho at 904, 556 P.2d at 863. In Jenkins I expressed some dismay at our keeping Johns alive any longer, and I deeply deplore today’s unwarranted extension.
Where we look at a statutory scheme as complete and complex as the Employment Security Law, complete with definitions where thought to be needed, it is indeed manifest that the legislature did not conceive that the word “misconduct” was at all in need of definition. I see nothing in the law which suggests that the legislature thought the word in need of definition, or that this Court should supply one. As to what misconduct is in the field of common relationships, in various contexts, parents know it, children know it, school teachers know it, and even animals know it. No one has convincingly shown me that the Industrial Commission does not know it — which brings me to further mention that which this Court has said so many times that citation is wholly unnecessary: The Commission by reason of its makeup and experience is possessed of a certain expertise in these matters to which the Court should defer.
The case before us is simply that an admitted alcoholic, given leave in order to take treatment, performed exactly as can most often be expected of an alcoholic. The Commission found that this was not misconduct — in which undertaking it should have been unfettered by definitions of this Court. The Commission will recognize misconduct when it meets up with it, and it will have no trouble in finding whether or not the activity of an alcoholic is or is not misconduct within the provisions of § 1366(e). Certain am I that if the employer’s report of the prevalence of the affliction, or sickness, as you will, in just its Pocatello plant is generally elsewhere true, the Commission will already have dealt with it. But if not, it still needs no help from this Court other than, perhaps, that which has been heretofore written.
In State v. Oyler, 92 Idaho 43, 436 P.2d 709 (1968), in the field of criminal law, as to the propensities of alcoholics, this Court said:
“That a person may be powerless to abstain from more or less continuous drinking to excess of alcoholic beverages has been formally recognized by medical and by legal authorities. Knowingly to impose a probationary condition of total abstentation upon such a person, and revocation of probation for his predestined failure to keep that condition, would be patently as vindictive as demanding a lame person run for his freedom; and if during probation the judge were to discover probationer was such a person, it would be impermissibly unjust not to remove that condition.” (Emphasis added.)
Is not knowingly to give an alcoholic employee a thirty day leave in which to turn himself in for a cure, and then firing him and sending prominent counsel from Chicago and Pocatello to Boise, Idaho, in an attempt to divest him of even his benefits— all “for his predestined failure” to keep his appointment — patently as vindictive as the Court’s illustration above?
Johns should be overruled. If the Court declines to do so, it can only be hoped that the legislature will take the matter up. As things stand now, with the release of the *663Court’s opinion today there is even less stability in this field than there was before. Employers, claimants, and the agencies involved are entitled to something better. A claimant now doesn’t know until this Court ultimately passes on his claim whether the benefits he has been awarded will be taken away, or whether he will finally gain them — usually two to four years after his discharge. I cannot but believe that an employee, allegedly discharged for misconduct would prefer to have his final decision at the hands of an appeals examiner, or the Commission — who act with their own expertise in determining whether the actions complained of constituted misconduct, as those agencies apply that word of common understanding — with which they deal on a constant basis.1
PER CURIAM.
Petition for rehearing having been granted in the above-entitled cause and the case rebriefed and reargued,
THE MAJORITY adheres to the views expressed in the Court’s original opinion.
McFADDEN and BISTLINE, JJ., respectively, adhere to the views expressed in their original dissenting opinions.

. Meanwhile, absent any members of the Court seeing any substance in my view of this case, I go on record as saying that what Justice McFadden has written comes much closer to being the right of it than does the Court’s opinion. Regrettably, however, Justice McFadden’s opinion merely takes up the cudgel as to misconduct which is intentional enough to disqualify a claimant, and misconduct which does not so measure up — all continuing to pay homage to the Court-supplied definition in Johns. And therein lies, and continues to lie the problem facing claimants and employers.