Court Opinion

ID: 9678529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:22:06.046713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:05.267200
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). The less written in the course of today’s deluge — of unemployment compensation appeals — the better for precedent guidance of those whose task it is to read and construe our overladen and now turbid writings in this field of administrative law (See comment, Miller v. F. W. Woolworth Company, 359 Mich 342). Here fact and finding disclose without dispute that this claimant slept at his post of vigil, without seeking substitutionary aid, despite the premonitory warnings and symptoms of nature. Such fact and finding amply support the appeal board’s determination of statutory misconduct, and so the judicial function is exhausted.
Claimant knew, when he sought and was given the position of fireman in the employer’s boiler room, that his primary responsibility was that of plant and employee safety, for which he was to be paid and did receive a “premium rate on that job.” If sleep*654ing on picket duty during wartime warrants death before a firing squad, surely the fact of going to sleep at a post like this warrants the presently quoted administrative finding and decision upon that finding.
This Court meddles too much in the administrative process — and so breeds unfounded as well as costly litigation — each time it fails to limit the judicial function to a determination whether there is “a rational basis for the conclusions approved by the administrative body.” Thus I adhere to the separate comments appearing in Miller, supra, and in Peaden v. Employment Security Commission, 355 Mich 613, 629, 631, and vote now for affirmance on ground that the evidentiary record fully justified the appeal board’s conclusion that “the action of the claimant in sleeping on the job, especially in view of his duties, constituted misconduct connected with the work.”
We should affirm summarily, as Judge Souter did, on such restricted ground.