Court Opinion

ID: 9719034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:41:09.653857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:04.209695
License: Public Domain

GATES, J.,
Concurring.—I find the present case disquieting. Whether due to inability or mere unwillingness, neither party has attempted to offer any pragmatic explanation for its actions. J. R. Greenhow, respondent’s Labor Relations Manager “testified that if the applicant had not [been] terminated there would have been no hardship to the company, only inconsistency. ” (Italics added.) One is therefore left to wonder why a company employing some 26,000 workers and “approximately 1,000 to 1,100 directory assistance operators, the majority of whom are in Southern California” would deem it necessary or appropriate to place in economic limbo those injured in its service merely to attain paper symmetry.
Appellant, in her turn, has failed to point to any loss she presently has suffered, or will necessarily suffer, by her reason of her “termination.” In fact, she did not dispute Greenhow’s testimony that “the company does not have to recall those who were terminated for exceeding leave of absence privileges, but no one who has ever applied for recall has been denied. ” (Italics added.)
In sum, apparently the parties have neither achieved nor forfeited anything of practical value or consequence to date. Furthermore, of course, how one chooses to characterize any possible future transformation of this appellant, who is presently incapacitated and receiving disability payments, to her former role of productive and salaried worker, appears to be no more than an exercise in preferential semantics. The court in Judson Steel Corp. v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1978) 22 Cal.3d 658, at page 667 [150 Cal.Rptr. 250, 586 P.2d 264], utilized such terms as “reinstatement” and “reemploying” (italics added) when treating with the plight of an injured employee who had been permanently discharged despite his full recovery.
Rare, indeed, should be the case where one party is rewarded and another punished by reason of some hypothetical future event that may or may not ever come to pass. Consequently, I join my colleagues in concluding that until such time as appellant is able to demonstrate she has sustained some actual detriment as the result of respondent’s conduct, the Board did not err in declining to require it to pay her a $10,000 penalty.