Court Opinion

ID: 9537442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:18:24.822443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:41.246183
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
To my mind, the issue presented by Woodhams — whether his falsification of his application was “misconduct” such that he should be precluded from recovering benefits — is a mixed question of law and fact, and this Court should be bound by the determination made by the Commission. On that basis we should affirm.
However, this Court in Johns v. S. H. Kress & Co., 78 Idaho 544, 307 P.2d 217 (1957), took unto itself the power to reverse findings such as this. Where the Court continues making ultimate decisions whether or not the given misconduct in question is such as to preclude recovery of benefits, as will be apparently so until Johns is discarded, I cannot agree that this decision should be affirmed.
I.C. § 72-1366(e) states that a claimant is ineligible for benefits if his unemployment is due to the fact “that he was discharged for misconduct in connection with his employment.” We noted in Wroble v. Bonners Ferry Ranger Station, 97 Idaho 900, 902, 556 P.2d 859, 861 (1976), that “[p]rior eases of this Court have involved misconduct as being disregard of the employer’s interests or disregard of the standards of behavior.” Under the facts of that case we held that § 72-1366(e) required a deliberate violation of an employer’s rules, with a deceitful intent on the part of the claimant, before the claimant lost his eligibility; since there was no evidence of any deliberate violation of the rules, we reversed the decision of the Commission denying Wroble benefits.
In Wroble we said that the falsification must have been deliberate; I would go one step further and hold that the falsification must be job-related and detrimental to the interests of the employer. Why punish the claimant where the failure to disclose the information was in the justifiable belief that the withholding was necessary in order to gain employment, and did not result in one iota of harm to the employer, the “deceitful intent” being aimed not at harming the employer, but at becoming employed? While the employer may still be within his rights in discharging the claimant, the withholding of unemployment benefits, at the hands of a state agency, seems both uncharitable and unwarranted.
Although Justice Keeton wrote in Mandes v. Employment Security Agency, 74 Idaho 23, 31, 255 P.2d 1049 (1953), in a dissenting opinion that the majority opinion in that case allowing benefits “lets the bars down and opens the flood gates for unauthorized claims,” nevertheless he also pointed out therein that “[t]he legislature declared in no uncertain terms that the purpose of the law is to provide ‘for the benefits of persons unemployed through no fault of their own.’ ”
I submit that the entire membership of the Mandes court, which was the same constituency of the court three years later in Johns v. S. H. Kress & Co., notwithstanding their decided split on the liberality of purpose of the Unemployment Security Law, would have been unanimous in allowing benefits for Woodhams. Woodhams essentially became unemployed through no fault of his own, that is, unless it can be said with any grace that being afflicted with epilepsy is some fault in the man. As Justice Keeton wrote in Mandes, the Act proposed that the claimant who should not receive benefits was the claimant “who wilfully fails to produce work which might be reasonably expected of him, or who is discharged for *372failing to carry out a reasonable, proper order in connection with his employment, or one who wilfully and voluntarily abandons his job without notice or without excuse ...” Id. at 31, 255 P.2d at 1054. In short, Justice Keeton, with Justice Taylor concurring, believed that the discharge, in order to sustain a denial of benefits, had to be for job-related misconduct — not for concealing a potential disability the disclosure of which reasonably could have been expected to result in not being hired in the first place.
In this case the Commission found that ‘[t]he concealment of the medical history was a violation of the employer’s rules and also a deliberate violation of the employer’s interests because it deprived the employer of its right to assign the claimant to work which would not be hazardous to the claimant, employer, or other employees.” Although this finding might be read as an implicit finding that Woodham’s falsification was job-related and detrimental to the interests of the employer, I do not believe that there was substantial and competent evidence to support such an implicit finding.
The only hazard shown here was that if Woodhams had a seizure, he might fall into moving machinery or off a deck onto someone else. There was no evidence that he was more likely than anyone else to suffer a loss of consciousness. I would not hold as a matter of law that an epileptic who has not had a seizure in over five years can never safely work in any type of job that poses any danger if he should subsequently have a seizure.1 Since no evidence was introduced on the issue of the likelihood of Woodhams’ having a seizure, beyond Wood-hams’ testimony that he hadn’t had one in over five years before he filled out the application, I would remand this case for a determination of the actual detriment to Ore-Ida posed by Woodhams’ falsification.
Woodhams filed his claim for benefits on September 6, 1977, over two and one-half years ago. This is typical of unemployment claims that come before this Court, and this time lapse between the filing of a claim and its final resolution ought to be brought to a halt, ere claimants will be receiving old age benefits before they receive any unemployment benefits. The greater portion of the time span intervening between filing of a claim and ultimate disposition would disappear were the Court to hold that Commission decisions may be interfered with by this Court only when there is a pure question of law. On questions of fact, and mixed questions of fact and law, earlier finality of unemployment claims — in itself a quality of great desirability — is an end toward which there should be judicial abstention in favor of administrative expedience.

. California has apparently amended its vehicle code to allow epileptics who have not had a seizure within the last three years to obtain a driver’s license. Cal.Veh.Code § 12805. Surely if one who has not had a seizure in three years may drive a car, one who has not had a seizure in over five years might work near moving machinery.