Court Opinion

ID: 9728801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:16:46.877998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:52.218054
License: Public Domain

GODFREY, Justice,
with whom NICHOLS, Justice, concurs, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
For the reasons given by Justice Glass-man, I agree that the arbitrators did not exceed their powers by finding Mr. Niles’s complaint arbitrable under the collective bargaining agreement. I agree also that it was not intended that the remedies available to a principal for an unfair evaluation be confined to the conference or rebuttal expressly provided by Article 14(C). Furthermore, I must agree that the First Amendment does not apply, as a mandate of positive law, to prohibit the arbitrators from ordering expungement of the superintendent’s evaluation from the principal’s file. If expungement were explicitly provided by the bargaining agreement, nothing in the Constitution would directly bar its enforcement, although I would have other reservations about its validity in view of the provisions of 20 M.R.S.A. § 161, defining a superintendent’s administrative responsibilities.
I must respectfully disagree, however, with the construction of this bargaining agreement that holds expungement to be within the arbitrators’ remedial authority by implication from the agreement. Ex-pungement of a superintendent’s evaluation from the principal’s file maintained by the superintendent ought to be regarded as a drastic remedy, and the arbitrators should not have been permitted to infer their authority to order it from any language contained in this bargaining agreement. Certainly such authority should not be inferred from the provisions of Article 7(A), giving a principal the right to indicate, and the superintendent the authority to mark for destruction, material in a principal’s personnel file that the superintendent or his designee believes to be “otherwise inappropriate to retain”.
That section of the agreement gives the principal the right to indicate such materials in his file as he believes to be obsolete or inappropriate to retain. The indicated materials are to be reviewed by the superintendent or his designee and “if in fact they are obsolete or otherwise inappropriate to retain, they shall be destroyed.” In the context of Dr. Wood’s general supervisory responsibilities under section 161 of the education law and of the specific responsibility, assigned to him by the Kittery School Committee, to evaluate all the principals in the Kittery School System, it was not a rational construction of the bargaining contract for the arbitrators to infer from Article 7 or any other provisions that they had authority to order removal of Dr. Wood’s evaluation from the principal’s official file maintained by Dr. Wood. This was a direct and unnecessary interference with Dr. Wood’s performance of his assigned responsibilities, and it operated as an unnecessary prior restraint on the preparation of an official record.
Although arbitrators must have authority to fashion remedies that are supportable by a rational construction of the contract, in deciding whether their construction is “rational”, it is necessary to look at the effect of the chosen remedy on the whole sitúa*539tion. The contract should not be deemed rationally to support a remedy that so plainly goes beyond what is needed to redress the complained-of grievance and, in doing so, interferes directly and unnecessarily with the performance of a legitimate function by one of the parties. Here, the Association’s primary objective had been served, of having Dr. Wood’s evaluation of Mr. Niles’s performance as principal declared “unfair” by a board of arbitrators. For record purposes it sufficed to order that a copy of the arbitrators’ decision be attached to Dr. Wood’s evaluation and placed in Mr. Niles’s file, to accompany Dr. Wood’s evaluation at all times.
Arbitrators usually have, and should have, wide discretion in fashioning remedies for the redress of grievances under collective bargaining agreements. On reviewing the arbitrators’ choice of remedy, the courts should ask only whether the choice is supported by a rational construction of the contract. But arbitrators should understand that in choosing among various possible effective remedies some of which do, and some of which do not, necessarily result in substantial interference with the legitimate operations of either party to the contract, “rational construction of the contract” requires the choice of a non-interfering remedy. Especially should this be understood by arbitrators in the public sector where, as here, the performance by public officials of their statutory responsibilities may be affected by the arbitrators’ decision on remedy. The cause of grievance arbitration would be better served by such an approach to the question of remedy rather than by an approach that searches merely the provisions of the contract to determine whether the chosen remedy “draws its essence from the contract”. Some of the interests affected by the remedy may not be evident in the contract.
There is an aspect of this case that makes the arbitrators’ choice of remedy especially unfortunate. The fairness of an evaluation of a teacher or principal is highly dependent on the position from which that person’s performance is perceived. The superintendent is the principal’s immediate administrative superior in the sprawling governmental arrangements for public education. The superintendent’s evaluation of the principal is unique in the system: neither students, nor parents, nor teachers, nor board members, nor outsiders have the same perspective as the superintendent on the principal’s performance. No third person, including arbitrators after full hearing, can entirely appreciate the dynamics of that complex, on-going relationship.1 While we accept on appeal the arbitrators’ finding that the superintendent’s evaluation of the principal, though basically “honest”, was not “fair” within the meaning of the contract, we note in the arbitrators’ opinion that even they had some reservations about certain aspects of the principal’s performance. Their criticism of the evaluation was based on their conclusion that the factual evidence cited by Dr. Wood for his six evaluations of Mr. Niles’s work in the “fair” category (as distinguished from his seven “good” ratings) did not support the numerical rankings. The report leaves the impression that the arbitrators surmised that at least some of the “fair” rankings might have been justifiable but that they had not been justified by the sketchy facts Dr. Wood supplied in his supporting memoran-da or in his testimony at the hearing.
The effect of the arbitrators’ order of expungement is that Superintendent Wood’s evaluation of Mr. Niles’s performance as principal is excised from Mr. Niles’s *540personnel file maintained by Dr. Wood as part of his official responsibilities. To whatever extent the contents of that file are made available through the years to the school committee with its frequently changing membership, to successive commissioners of education, and perhaps to prospective academic employers and colleagues of Mr. Niles, those persons will not have whatever benefit there may be in knowing what Superintendent Wood’s uncoerced evaluation of Mr. Niles’s performance really was, however unfair that evaluation may have seemed to the arbitrators.2
In such a situation, expungement operates, just as censorship or prior restraint operates in the public domain, to destroy certain possibilities for the communication of certain ideas. The fact that the number of persons is relatively small to whom the ideas may be expected to be communicated renders the suppression less pervasive in effect but does not render it any less objectionable in principle. Nothing within the four corners of the collective bargaining agreement justified a result so contrary to the spirit and purpose of the constitutional policy against prior restraint in the communication of ideas.
The judgment of the Superior Court should be modified to set aside the arbitrators’ award as going beyond their authority insofar as it orders expungement of Superintendent Wood’s evaluation. It would be within the arbitrators’ remedial power to order a copy of their decision finding the evaluation unfair to be included with the superintendent’s evaluation in the principal’s file. The judgment should be modified accordingly.

. The arbitrators fully acknowledge this fact in their opinion, saying repeatedly that they cannot and will not substitute their judgment for that of Dr. Wood. See R. Blake & J. Moulton, The Managerial Grid 7 (1964):
While every organization has hierarchy and while many organizations have job descriptions that depict an individual’s responsibility under his hierarchical position, the problem of boss-subordinate relations is far more complex than can possibly be pictured by a job description. But the foundation for understanding management is in recognizing that a boss’ actions are dictated by certain assumptions he makes regarding how supervision should be exercised. [Footnote omitted]

. Whatever may be “the alternative means of communication available to Wood for expression of his personal views” (Justice Glassman’s opinion, at page 537, supra), they are not likely to include a mode of communicating to future holders of office in the educational system. The bargaining contract provided that no personnel records or files regarding principals may be maintained “separate from a single Personnel File.”