Court Opinion

ID: 9546257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:26:39.358622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:12.467261
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice,
concurring in the result in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in that portion of the majority opinion which affirms the Industrial Commission’s finding that the employee was not discharged for misconduct and therefore was entitled to unemployment compensation.
However, I believe that the employer had an arguable point that he was entitled to dismiss the employee because of his having filed a false application in which he omitted a prior employment which he had held for only three or four weeks and which he quit without giving any notice. The employer in this case, Miller, was concerned that, having found that the employee Davis had filed a false application omitting that information, he would “quit us without notice.” Accordingly, I do not believe that the appeal was brought without foundation, and no attorney fees should be awarded. If today’s opinion represents how this Court now intends to apply the unreasonably and without foundation standard in determining the allowance of attorney fees on appeal, and if the rule is going to be applied evenhandedly against claimants as well as for them, then we are apt to see a substantial increase in the number of attorney fees awards against claimants in the near future, and the claimants bar should be put on notice.