Court Opinion

ID: 9703037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:37:44.290599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:45.032997
License: Public Domain

FERREN, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
Given this court’s deferential standard of review, I must agree that the Director lawfully ruled that the hearing examiner erred, as a matter of law, in concluding that petitioner had been the victim of a retaliatory discharge based solely on the employer’s refusal to permit part-time work. Contrary to the examiner’s reading of the statute, the fact that petitioner was able and willing to perform his job part-time did not protect him against termination of a job requiring the employee to work full-time, provided there was no other evidence of employer animus toward petitioner that suggested retaliation. See Lyles v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Employment Servs., 572 A.2d 81 (D.C.1990).
I part company with the majority, however, in affirming, rather than remanding, the Director’s decision on retaliatory discharge.7 *1045According to applicable regulations, 7 DCMR § 230.10 provides:
The Director may affirm an order or may set aside or suspend, in whole or in part, any order not supported by substantial evidence or not in accordance with the Act.
But the next section, 7 DCMR § 230.11, adds an important limitation:
If a substantial question of law or fact prevents the Director from affirming, the compensation order shall be set aside and the case remanded to the Hearing or Attorney Examiner for further development based on specific findings of deficiencies in the compensation order. [Emphasis added.]
Because, in this case, “a substantial question of law ... prevented] the Director from affirming,” id., the applicable regulation, § 230.11, required the Director to remand the case to the hearing examiner for further proceedings. The Director did not have authority to take a second step, making her own evidentiary findings and then, based on those findings, ruling definitively on the retaliatory discharge claim. See id.
It is one thing for the Director to rely on a hearing examiner’s findings of fact but then to reject the examiner’s conclusion of law, on the basis of those facts, that a claimant’s discharge was retaliatory. See Dyson v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Employment Servs., 566 A.2d 1065 (D.C.1989). It is quite another thing- — as happened here — for the Director to reject the hearing examiner’s conclusion of law based on a particular factual finding, but then to find additional facts herself to support outright reversal, rather than a remand, of the retaliatory discharge ruling.
In this case, the Director acknowledged that the employer could lawfully terminate petitioner for his inability to perform full-time work, but she added an important caveat: termination would be justified only if there was “no other evidence that the discharge claim was motivated, wholly or in part, by a desire or intent to intimidate, harass, or punish the claimant for his pursuit of a worker’s compensation claim.” Remand Order, Nov. 7, 1989, at 7. The Director then reversed the examiner’s retaliatory discharge ruling because the examiner had made no specific findings of fact supporting retaliatory discharge other than the employer’s unwillingness to accept petitioner’s part-time status. The problem, however, is that in reversing outright, instead of remanding, the Director found additional facts cutting against retaliation while ignoring other evidence that petitioner had proffered to show retaliation. Rather than remanding for the hearing examiner to consider the evidence once again in light of the correct rule of law — as 7 DCMR § 230.11 requires — the Director kept the case herself and assumed the examiner’s role of fact-finder.
More specifically, the Director found, based on petitioner’s deposition testimony, that petitioner had identified “no evidence that his employment with employer was terminated because he filed a worker’s compensation claim.” Remand Order, Nov. 7, 1989, at 8. But that deposition was not the only relevant evidence. The Director ignored petitioner’s testimony before the hearing examiner that the employer had discharged petitioner one week before a scheduled independent medical examination which the employer had requested and the insurance carrier had arranged. This evidence, if true, had a bearing on possible employer animus: a desire to discharge (in retaliation for filing a worker’s compensation claim) an employee who might soon be declared fit to resume full-time work and thus not so easily dis-chargeable. To be sure, employer representatives denied any knowledge of the scheduled examination, but these denials presented a classic credibility conflict for the appropriate fact-finder — the hearing examiner — to resolve. See King v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Employment Servs., 560 A.2d 1067, 1072 (D.C.1989) (“[T]he Director may not consider the evidence de novo and make her own findings of fact_ Neither the Director nor this court may substitute itself for the trier of fact who received and weighed the evidence and who heard and saw the claimant.”); Dell v. District of Columbia *1046Dep’t of Employment Servs., 499 A.2d 102, 107 (D.C.1985) (Director’s undertaking de novo review of administrative record “would drastically alter the traditional standards for review of administrative findings and would turn the law on its head.”).
In light of the hearing examiner’s legal conclusion that petitioner had been the victim of a retaliatory discharge, based solely on the fact that he was available for part-time work, there was no need for the examiner to make further findings on retaliation. But once it was clear (from the Director’s ruling) that the examiner had erred as a matter of law in relying exclusively on the part-time work theory, King and Dell make clear that petitioner was entitled to consideration of his other evidence of retaliation by the very person' — the hearing examiner — who had heard the testimony. Petitioner’s claim was not properly rejected by the Director who, acting de novo, took on the mantle of fact-finder without even addressing all the evidence. Years ago we emphasized:
If we were to accept DOES’ argument that the Director can make her own credibility findings based upon a reading of the record, we would essentially scrap the principle of deference to the examiner who actually hears the testimony and is in the best position to make such determinations.
Gunty v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Employment Servs., 524 A.2d 1192, 1198 (D.C.1987). Those words apply here.
In sum, the Director found facts to support reversal as to retaliatory discharge, without dealing with record testimony requiring evaluation of credibility. That was properly the hearing examiner’s, not the Director’s, job. We should therefore remand the case to allow the hearing examiner to complete the retaliatory discharge analysis in the first instance — indeed, the kind of remand the Director herself ordered upon noting that the hearing examiner had ignored evidence germane to petitioner’s disability claim. See supra note 1.
Respectfully, therefore, I dissent.

.In the second part of her ruling, the Director reversed the hearing examiner’s decision denying permanent partial disability benefits. The Director remanded the case to the hearing examiner because of the examiner’s failure to account for various categories of evidence, favorable to the petitioner, which according to the Director *1045"would have had a definite bearing, if credited, upon any decision respecting the nature of and extent of claimant’s disability status after January 21, 1987.”